Do you gift mini albums?

[mochamama]

I have bought several mini album kits, where I just add the photo, in hopes of gifting for say Mother's Day. I have never done it.

But this year (lol) this year is different. I'm going to do it! My biggest issue with the ones you can buy, is that the kits aren't usually good enough for both girls and boys. And since I have 2 daughters & 1 son, its important to me.

So this year I was thinking Im going to buy some templates and just do it myself. I can't just use my own gallery ones, because the journaling is personal, and usually directed to the person in the photo.

So if you do mini albums, how do you make the layouts? How do you bind them? I want to do a crafty, down to earth album for my mom but I don't want the pages to get ruined. Any tips?

[Brandy]

I've not done this before lol but interested in it too so hope you get some good answers

[Shawna]

I did my first mini gift album for Mother's Day last year & have been hooked on making them ever since! And my family just loves them & expects them as their gifts now LOL! So far I've only used the Shabby Princess piece a cake albums, but I've purchased several other quick page albums (including several from here @ SSD) that I plan on using at some point. Right now I have 2 girls but I've also made albums for the grandparents that include my nephew & have never had a problem finding something that works.

I resize my completed pages to 4.75x4.75 & then print at Sam's Club on a 5x7, then I trim the excess & use a corner rounder on the edges. I use the 5x5 blank boardbooks from BareBooks.com (only $1 each) and use Xyron adhesive to adhere the pages to the board book. They are super easy to put together & if I was craftier I could probably jazz them up even more with ribbon or something but I like them plain too! Here are a couple of examples of ones I made at Christmas for each my brother's as gifts. One is my nephew & the other was my brand new niece!



But I've also used 4x6 templates & purchased kits to make 4x6 pages & then just placed them in little 4x6 brag books. And I've gotten lots of ideas saved to try, like an accordian album or little chipboard albums. Mostly from scrapper's blogs or in the galleries!

[MyEbella]

I have done regular 8x8 pages and also resized to 6x6 and just put in page protectors and in books for my mom & MIL...but going right now to check out those board books...those look amazing!!!!

[Paula Duncan]

Shawna what a super cute idea!! I love it!!

[Stacey42]

I love the board books. I need to check those out! mostly I have just used 5x7 premade quick page mini albums or templates (depends on how much time I have), add you photos, some journaling, print and place in small photo album. But I may try the board book. I could use some existing layouts & save myself some time

[mochamama]

That is awesome Shawna! I'll have to look around more, its been awhile since I did. The ones I was finding seemed to be ether really boyish or girly.

I'm going to do that for this mothers day and the board books is awesome, at that price I'm going to get some for my kids to make books out of! It'd be perfect for the unit we are doing right now.

[Shawna]

I know I am in love with those little board books! And at only $1 each you can't beat that! They do have a $10 minimum order, but they have lots of other cool little books in different sizes too!

I also did some trial & error with them, the very first ones I printed the pages 5x5 & found that when I was putting them on the board book pages it was very hard to get them on there straight! So now I always print them just a 1/4" smaller & they are so much easier to put on straight now! Plus I use the repositionable adhesive, just in case LOL!

[Brandy]

aw those are so cute! thanks for the ideas!

[Yenny]

Wow! Those are soo cute! Great idea! TFS