 Hi everybody it's Sam at Mixed Up Crowd, thank you for watching my tutorial today. I'm going to be showing you how to make this really beautiful Christmas mini album. So I have absolutely loved making this and it is just so heavy now, it's got a real weight to it. But yeah there's something about a mini album when you hold one and it's all done, it's just lovely. So this one is using these lovely papers by Echo Park. Now these are last years Christmas collection but I will, yeah 2017, I got given these as a gift so I will try and source out and I may even well speak to Louise at Thompson's Craft Supplies and see if she does have any of these left and if she does then I will put a little notice or something on my page on Facebook if there's anybody interested and you'd like to get these if you live in the UK because she ships to the UK only. So these are the papers, they are gorgeous, you get this big sticker sheet and you get all these kind of cut out, I show you here as well. Look at all these lovely images, really really nice and really fun and I've used so many of them throughout this. So the whole album was done with this here, okay. So it's just 12 sheets of 12x12 double-sided papers and then a 12x12 elements stickers. So if I just bring this up here you can see the front and I've used some of my real-looking real-life leaves. These are little bells, you can just hear it there and then these are some puffy stickers from American crafts that I've added onto there as well. This bow is a lovely piece of fabric kind of ribbon that I've had which says Noel all on it and I've had it for ages. I brought this in Totnes in a little independent craft shop and I'm so glad I did and I've saved it till now because it works so lovely with this album. So once I was doing it I realized I needed to change these, I'm going to make these gold, I'm going to buy some gold binder rings and these metal corners here I'm also going to put on the back page as well but for now it's perfect, it works well. So I'm just going to give you a quick run through of the pages and then we can get into the tutorial. So you've got only three styles of pages, one is this pocket with a photo mat, you can put two photo mats in here if you want and each of these hold a six by four photo. It's a six by four album so I thought they're the most common photos used so that's what I'm going to do. I've got these little journaling sections here so I'm going to write little kind of just a little you know piece about whatever photos go here and it's just a nice little memory to keep there and they're just kind of in between every few pages. Then I've got this flap page so this fits a four by four picture and then each of these sides fit another six by four so it's one two three pictures you can fit here and then I kept this piece spare to either add some more of maybe these bits here that I've got once I have my pictures because they match the collection or some more journaling just talking about the picture in that moment. Then the other style sorry four styles I guess then I've just got plain so this would just fit a six by four photo straight on there but again you could add more pockets you could add other styles of pages is entirely up to you. Here's the pocket one again with another photo mat and again you can see all those beautiful papers I just bring that up look at that lovely little scene that I've created there and then yeah the tuck spots style so this one here so I've created these little tuck spots again with a photo mat you can put two photo mats in here so this could potentially hold four six by four pictures just in this page. It's very easy to adapt this album for whatever needs you want but it is primarily meant for six by four pictures but you could certainly fill it with four by fours and things like that and yeah that's how it just then goes so there's another flap page all these blank ones see the papers just all work perfectly another pocket one there with the photo mat this one I really like this little tuck spot so I've just put the tree and I've just stuck it at the very bottom there and then this photo mat just pops in there and that could easily fit two photo mats in this style tuck spot so just give you other ideas of how you can obviously use them another little journal card another flap there love this one with the big Noel these were all those stickers in the pack in the kit and I've just mounted them on craft card and then fussy cut them again another plain photo mat there love that print there this one another little tuck spot have yourself a merry little Christmas coming to the end now there's 10 pages 20 sides so it fills loads still got to do that one I forgot to do that one and then the very back page I've even used that again for another pocket and you could certainly again put more than the one in there but if I just bring that up again look at that it's just so pretty so yeah it's it's been a labour of love I've absolutely enjoyed this it's very easy to do and it doesn't matter if you don't have eyelets you can just obviously keep it without them and even if you don't have these rings you could just put ribbon through and hold the whole thing together with ribbon alright so many many ways to adapt this to suit your needs but I hope you like it and let's get into the tutorial and make it okay so first of all you're going to need to just prepare your pages and your front and back cover now I don't know how many pages I'm gonna want for this and the good thing is is you can just add you know as many as you want as you go because it's going to be on those ring binders it doesn't matter so at the moment I've cut ten pieces of five by nine no sorry five by eight and a quarter so it's the width of a four card stock and then you'll get two pieces out of each sheet of card stock so I've got a six by four by six photo here and basically it will have room to go on here with a mat room for the ring pools and then to do some decoration I want to stick some stickers and femurs maybe do a tiny little bit of journaling there as well and also we're going to have some interactive pages as well with some flip sections and some little photo mats and stuff like that so I just thought it was a nice size if you kind of think if you keep it off to the right give yourself half an inch half an inch half an inch and this section here you'll have your ring pools and you know you just got room to do a little bit of decoration but my focus was to make this purely for six four by six photos okay so then for your front and your back I've got some really strong chipboard that I've made up here so this is now I'd say it's yeah it's just over one mil and it's just the backs of my paper packs I've just put them back to back or front to front so that the backs are on show so I've just got the plain white and not the print just in case any paper you were using was maybe a little bit thinner and it might have been a bit see-through if you you know fold them in on themselves stick them you know face up then yeah you don't see that so these pieces here are five and a half by nine okay so you've just got a nice if I just bring this in so again if you imagine you're gonna have the ring pools about there and it sits in the middle okay so I said they're gonna come in let me grab the ones that I'm gonna be using so I plan on using these larger binder rings and these are the two inch ones so if you imagine that it's gonna be about like so that's where it's gonna kind of go through and we're gonna reinforce all this I'm gonna put eyelets on it it's gonna be a super strong really lovely little album but it means that we've got this whole thickness to you know fill our pages and we can have quite a lot of bulk in this album so yeah it's gonna be good fun so you will need two pieces of that for your front and your back and then like I said I've cut ten but you may want less you may have more it's entirely up to you and then to decorate you're gonna need two pieces I need to decide what piece I want for the back but this is to wrap around our front and our back covers so this is a piece of ten and a half by I guess just under seven and a half and basically we're gonna start sticking this that's the backside but this is going around and create a really nice cover okay so I've just covered this with a strong double-sided tape this is my scotch tape that I like to use and I'm just using my bone folder as I always do just to go over and just make sure that there's no air bubbles you can use a wet glue over that all of it if you want but I like to use some of my strong double-sided tape and a little bit of my wet glue just to give it wiggle room but I've covered the whole thing so I've made sure that they line right up perfectly just in case again you've got a thinner paper to cover some double-sided tapes can be a little bit thick and you'll actually see them so you don't want that so if you keep them really close together then that will stop that from happening so grab my poke tool so I'm just going to pull off all the backing okay I've gone ahead and put wet glue over the top and then you just want to sit this making sure it's in the middle and you've got an even border should have about an inch maybe just under on the left and the right hand side there but my paper I just stick that down flip it over quickly is this kind of pattern so it doesn't matter if you've gone a bit crooked for example obviously if you're using something that's striped so maybe this side you need to make sure obviously you're getting it nice and even so flip it over and just go over and just spread out any glue and make sure all that tape and everything is all stuck down okay and then if you just go around each side and just fold it now we're going to be covering over this as well so what you want to do is just I'm going to pop some of my double-sided tape along the four edges here and again I've just put some wet glue there and then I also just like to always run a bead of glue actually right in the kind of the sides there of the chipboard because we've got that kind of one two mil height to it you want the card you know your paper that you're wrapping around to stick to the side of that as well okay and then I like to do mine so I'm going to be putting my corner protectors on this so I like to bring in my corners and then actually I just thought I need to put a bit of glue on here and here so it sticks to that as well so I just bring it over so that you get a perfect square on your chipboard and if you get your bone folder and work it in just bring this up so you can see so there you go you can just see I've really pushed it against that chipboard so you can see the outline of it underneath so you get a perfect square here okay so again go down to the next one pop some glue kind of to the left and the right of that cornered square and then bring that over doesn't matter if it's not an exact square in the middle but it just keeps it all nice and lined up if it is and then just work in that glue and I've always done my albums like this I know lots of people do it the other way and they cut but you don't have to cut anything here and even if you don't want to use the corner protectors this is still a nice way to do it and then that's all going to come up okay so there's my two so I'm just going to do the same on the other ones okay and then I've already got glue on here just pop a bit more but I'm just going to pop some on those triangles that we folded over because obviously that won't have any glue on like so and then just bring over all your sides so I'm just going to just tack them all and then I can go back around and work them all in better okay and then just go around spend some time make sure you're squeezing all that glue and you're getting really nice edges there to your cover okay so there is my front and my back and they're really nice really strong so now we need to just cover the inside so I've just cut myself two pieces of this nice red you can see that it's going to cover that back perfectly and this measures five and a quarter by eight and a half and you basically want to stick that onto the backs of both your front and your back cover so they're like so okay so they're both done really solid now they're so nice love these so next we need to decide where we're going to start punching our holes so you want to get your card whatever you're using I've got my craft card for my pages and just line a page line a line a page down so you get a nice even border I can see I've got that red but I'm using here nice and even okay and then you want to come in this is entirely up to you but you want to come in I'm going to come in about half an inch now I'm using my screw punch because I'm going to be punching through obviously thick layers if you've got a hand punch and you know it go through them fine I know the crocodile will go through this with no problems otherwise if you don't have any then you can use a pokey tool something like this and just poke through enough and then use your eyelet punch if you're going to use that if you're not even going to use that then you can kind of decorate your holes if you have just kind of poked them and you can decorate them with little circles over the top but again I'll show you that kind of stuff when we get to it so I've got my largest largest one in there and let's do some pencil markings first of all before I get right into this so it's five inches so I'm just marking at two and a half just in the middle there and I think I'm going to come up about an inch from the middle and do each of my no bit more actually I think I'm going to do yeah an inch and a quarter from the middle okay so inch and a quarter so an inch and a quarter and then come in I think three eighths of an inch will be fine all these marks on in there to rub it all out three eighths so there's that one there okay so ignore that cross okay so there you can see I marked the middle which is two and a half because this is five inches and then from that two and a half center I came out one and a quarter and again one and a quarter and you can just see the pencil marks I've done there so then I'm going to hole punch this first like so and then pop it back over here make sure it's all nice and even sorry if it's gone a bit loud but we've got a massive rainstorm just come in and then I'm just drawing a circle inside those circles so that now you can see where to mark on this okay and then you have to pump this a few times there we go perfect and again the other one and then yeah and just see I bring up there you go see them both so now with that piece grab your back obviously making sure your card it's all the face in the right way you don't want upside down on that side so I'm putting them both on top of each other facing no I'm telling you and doing it the wrong way I know it's got to be like that so there you go over the top and then I can just again draw right through and then just do the same okay so again there's those you can just make them out one there and one there so now they will marry up perfectly and then with that page one that we've done you basically want to use that as your guide for all your other pieces so first of all I'm just gonna go on each one make sure they're all nice and lined up and just trace each one like so okay so they are all done you can see they all line up I can see my hand underneath and that's what you want and obviously that's all gonna sit on there and that is all gonna sit on top like so okay now I want to decorate sorry now I want to protect all of my holes so I've got all I'm using gold because I'm also going to be using these corner protectors so you're gonna have two there and then two on the back and I think I'm gonna buy some more so that I can have so they'll be on the back piece there because I think I want them on all four so I don't know whether to just do all four on the front and then just do the back because obviously I can take it apart whenever but I think it looks nice on all four pieces there and ideally I'm just thinking now it'd be quite nice to get these in gold but I can replace that so that's not a problem I'm not worried about that now so basically we'll do that later but I'm just getting my eyelets or grommets and just push them through and this by doing all this it will mean your album will last forever you know it's not gonna have all where the pressure spots are all protected with this metal hardware so you can see that I've just pushed them through they just come through that side there and then I've just got my pliers these are really old pliers but they're a little bit more they've got more of they go in deeper so I can just get them around that little bit more than the actual newer ones okay so that's the front done I'm gonna do the back and then I'm also gonna do all of my pages okay I just put it all together just to see how it looked and it's so good I am so pleased with this really is lovely and it's just gonna yeah once it's got I'm gonna put some nice ribbons through this because I've got the way I'm gonna decorate it you're gonna have the ribbon kind of working its way all the way around we're gonna have stuff all over here and it's just gonna look fab so now I just want to put these on so I'm just gonna take this back off again take the front off I'm just gonna put all four on the front and then once I order the rest then I can put them on the back as well so pop it on flip it over and then I like to use just an old rag or some tissue and just lightly and just bring that up you can see there how nice that looks so yeah I'm just gonna go and do that on all four corners okay there it is again with the gold eyelets that just look so lovely so professional but yeah I definitely need to change my binder rings because the silver I just yeah I don't like it but like I said it's not affecting me doing this and it doesn't look terrible but yeah I just want it all gold so I will replace that or even I might see if I can get red ones that would look really nice as well so now the fun part of decorating the front and all of our pages okay so I started to gather bits together and on the one of the 12 by 12 sheets of that paper pack it is just it is gorgeous I know I've already said how much I love it but yeah are these ones here so these are these lovely little cutouts I've cut out the Mary and Bright which was down here and then I just popped it on some red cardstock which is the same red cardstock that I used to line inside here so I'm trying to keep that same red will be I think kind of a matte layer that I use a lot throughout the fold the album because it does go perfectly with the the bread that's throughout this paper pack so I've used that and then I have had this for ages such a long time and it's this beautiful I mean it's I guess it is a ribbon it's just a really nice thick roll of fabric it's a canvas it's very very thick it's actually a linen yeah it's a really thick linen which I guess is a canvas so it's what's used and it's got no l now what I'm going to do is I'm going to have it stuck on the front under here this is going to go over the top so the no l comes out here probably two no elves so that'll be enough to tie it up and then behind all of this I'm going to put this foliage leaves just to kind of bring out the fact that they are here as well I just want this to become really textured quite fun to look at I'm going to pop some down there I don't want too many but just just enough just kind of yeah a few up there and a few in that corner and then it's going to be all raised on this foam now these ones here are really thick these measure because they're thicker than my normal adhesive and these are foam adhesives and these are from I want to say hobby craft I'm pretty sure they were and they are one two three four nearly four mil so they're really thick now that's going to give me the height so that this can still stick but these can obviously go underneath as well this is going to be stuck directly onto that with some hot glue so that will be attached anywhere I'm not too worried about that but I'm going to have a lot going on so I'm going to crack on and get that all done and then I'll show you when I'm finished okay so there is my cover I love this it's just so pretty and I've got little bells there that are like the berries and just hear them jingle put some real looking leaves there so it just kind of complements the lovely images there and then I've got that half of ribbon so I've got the three no owls there I'm going to do the same on the back but I don't know what I'm doing yet so at the minute just got that one half but it's really secure it's really strong it's not going anywhere I might put some Winkistella over the Mary and bright as well just to add some sparkle to the front but now we want to start doing the pages so I'm going to do a lot of duplicate pages and I will go through each of those styles if you want to go ahead and just map all of your pages and just put your four by six photos on top and just have one photo on each of these which will give you 20 pages if you're sticking to the 10 pages 20 which will give you 20 photos if you're just sticking to the 10 pages so this piece here you can see that sits perfectly and it gives you a nice kind of balanced spine there so I've done the same gap that you've got from the the eyelet to the edge from the eyelet into here things like that just help keep it all balanced and a bit more finished okay so this piece here measures your four yeah four and three quarters by seven and a quarter so it's entirely up to you how you want to decorate this album but that I would say is a good size mat so this one's going to go down here on my first page and then what I've done is I've got this one here and this is going to go on top again with a nice frame of that pattern paper like so and then you can see there so when it sits over the top it's got a nice frame and then this is going to have a photo on it so this will fit a six by four photo so I made sure that this one is yet four and a half so you've got you can do a four and a quarter by six by five and three quarter layer on top which I'll probably do and then the photo so it's got a nice frame yeah by seven so there's there's plenty of room there to decorate and so on and then basically that will stick and open and you can have another photo here and then a four by four photo here and then some journaling space or pop some stickers and bits of pieces like that I will share it when it's filled with photos just so you can kind of get more inspiration there as well but that's what I'm going to do for the first page and I'm going to duplicate this on probably maybe four pages have this same layout okay so if you just want to carry on and kind of prepare those ones okay so I've been busy getting lots of stuff done because the rest is very easy to talk you through so I have popped the back one on so if I just flip this over and you can see there I've just put this one which is Santa Claus has come into town and I've just attached it exactly the same way that I did the front that I showed you okay so that's easy so that's now all in place then I've started going through and in the pack one of the papers I'll just show you you get all these kind of different you know cutouts and there was one 12 by 12 sheet that had these size ones here so what I've gone ahead and done so I've just put a little bit of the same craft card around the edge whole punch to the same distance as these ones underneath and I'm going to use these for journaling so I can put a little I can write something and then stick it on here just talking about you know that particular picture and you know just kind of capture any kind of fun memories that may have happened I can just write them down so these are little journaling pieces that kind of flap in the middle so I had showed you this piece here and I will show you how many of them I ended up using and talk you through the mats now what I've started doing is these pockets so I'm going to show you a pocket in a minute and then I've just done tuck tuck spots and then these photo mats so you can put a six by four photo so that's two pictures that will go even on the front cover here and I've just you can see what I've done there just done some die cuts and just kind of stuck it onto the front so I'm going to show you how to do the pocket I'm going to talk you through these mats and layers for these ones which I showed you and then basically what I've done is I'm calling this the flap so this is flap this is pocket and then this is tuck spot here and you can see that just tucks in and again it's another photo mat they are the three layouts that I've done throughout this whole album so what I will do is tell you how many flaps I've done okay so I've got one two three okay so you would need four of those on the other side of every page I'm keeping it plain I'm just going to have a six by four photo stuck there now if you wanted to you could do the pockets on these pages as well and then you again you get two photos on there and two photos on this you get you know four pictures whereas I'm going to get three but that's fine you know and I can always change it if I want to so the pockets are really nice so the pockets I have done one two three four and then I've got one at the very back which I'm going to show you and that'll be five okay so you'll need five of the pockets tuck spots are whatever you want to do basically they're just these little pieces that I die cut so this was the sticker sheet that come with the kit I stuck all the stickers on some craft card and then just fussy cut them and then I've just made these little kind of tuck spots stuck it down on the corner very similar to what I've done with my other mini albums with the tuck spots that I've done but I like that I've stuck the center and you've got the little bell there and then once the photos on top now I made sure that I kept the really colorful patterned paper on these kind of photo mats so that when whoever you know of myself when I take it out and I look at the photos I still get to appreciate this nice beautiful paper so any of my really patterned paper and sorry simple paper again there I've made sure that I've got really nice papers again so I get to appreciate them but where I've done the flap pages so for example maybe not so much that one because that's still nice you still get to see some of it but I've kept them all plainer there we go you can see there on the back okay so I've used that whole pack in this kit in this mini album so I'm really really pleased with that okay so let's go through and do the pocket this one's a nice pocket as well it's a little tuck spot and it's just the tree that I fussy cut and I've just stuck the very bottom of the tree there and then that pitch about can just sit in there I really like that one again little journaling's there these are the other ones there that you can see that's another nice one and I've stuck all of these you can see they're really 3d where I've put them on the foam adhesive there and again that's another photo mat you could also put two of these in so you'd have four pictures just in this one pocket so you know you can put a lot of pictures in this album but let's just finish this last piece off there's that one there as well oh I need to do that not done that one so I'm going to do the pocket now for this so and I'll talk you through the sizes you need for your photo mats so for these ones here it's entirely up to you again how many you want so I'm going to put all the quantities and these measurements in my blog but I'm just going to show you how to make them here so this is a piece of six and a half by four and a half and that's the craft card then the layer on top is four and a quarter by six and a quarter and I've just done that on both sides so those are your photo mats that will go in all of the areas that I showed you okay so that one's going to be for this and then I've already gone ahead and kind of started decorating that once you can see what I've done there and that's going to lay it on top of that mat there and then this is the pocket so this is the craft card and you're going to need a piece of eight by three and a half eight by three and a half and you want to score on the three sides at half an inch okay so you can see my score lines there I'm just going to burnish those score lines and then you just want to cut wedges off you can cut right across but you will kind of want to do them a bit more angled I guess like so okay that's what you're going to do before I stick it down I'm going to stick these so the mat to go on top is two and five eighths of an inch by six and five eighths that one's going to go on there and then the layer again to go on top of that is two and three eighths of an inch by six and three eighths of an inch so I'm just going to stick those two all on top of each other okay and then I'm just going to run some of my red tape because it sticks obviously very well and it will stick well to this craft card just going to pop that on all of those three tabs okay so this one's gone on the back page but if you were putting it on a normal page to say I'll use this one as an example you just want to obviously make sure that you line it up within that mat there so bring it down to the bottom you should have an equal oh gosh I don't want to put it on there I'll cover that with a photo but you should have an equal about one quarter of an inch all the way around okay so this one's going to go down here so just keep it equal from the sides and then that little photo mat can pop in there there we go how lovely does that look so cute really like this I just need to obviously decorate that but you needed 20 of those big mats that I told you about earlier but that is it and I just I adore it it's very easy to do it took me probably between having lunch housework took about five hours I reckon to do this album and I just love this lovely big fabric bow there and it's just gonna look so nice in my basket so there you have it I can't wait to fill it all with photos I hope you've enjoyed it I just need to finish change those rings and obviously put these on the the back pages the back board here but yeah they have it it's gorgeous so I hope you've enjoyed this lovely little Christmas mini album tutorial I'd love to see all your versions make sure you share them over on mixed up crafters Facebook group but until next time guys thanks for watching and I'll see you again soon