Keukenhof Pocket Mini Album

Confession: I'm in a layout-making rut right now, but I still have the deep desire to create something every day, so... I'm going to focus my energy on making mini albums until my scrapbook layout mojo returns!

The idea for this album started from a cut file that I found while perusing through the Silhouette store searching for... "mini albums" :) It is called Pocket Mini Album by Lori Whitlock and is only 99 cents. Then I needed to figure out what to cut the mini album from. How about all the flower papers from Oh My Heart? Done and done! I also cut a page from textured white cardstock for the cover.

There is a flap on each pocket page meant for the adhesive, but I didn't think any of my adhesives would stand the test of time and hold everything together. Enter my trusty sewing machine! I stitched along the top and bottom edge of each assembled pocket page, then I stacked them all together and straight stitched down the middle. My sewing machine put up a little fight trying to sew through all the layers of paper and cardstock, and it's definitely not a "pretty" or "perfect" stitch, but I'm all about embracing the imperfections in scrapbooking! Ain't nobody got time for dat! I wrapped a piece of floral washi tape around the spine anyway for reasons three-fold: to add some pretty color, to cover the horrendous stitching, and to enforce the spine and help it not tear. 

The cut file also includes a page to insert into each pocket which I cut from smooth white cardstock. I didn't use a cut file for every pocket, some are just photos adhered back-to-back and I added a fussy cut flower to another pocket. You can put whatever you want in these pockets! Ephemera! Confetti! Ticket stubs! So many possibilities. Here is the front of each embellished page:

And the back of each embellished page:

I worked on one spread and the accompanying pocket pages at a time. All of the photos are either 2" square or 4x3". I printed my favorite pictures at the larger 4x3" size so you can see the details better.

Since all of the floral papers were full of patterns and very colorful, I needed to tone one side of each spread down a bit so as not to compete with the photos. To do this, I either added vellum or a wash of white acrylic paint and then the photos showed up much better.

I mixed typed and hand written journaling, whichever I thought fit the style of the page better. I used a font called Remington Noiseless and for most of the printed words I copied & pasted them directly from the blog post recap about this day and then printed & trimmed then adhered them in place.

I added a lot of machine stitching and decided to keep the threads long to add character.

This is definitely a CHUNKY album! I thought about making some kind of closure, and I may go back and do that, but for now, I like how it's easy to open and flip through.

A lot of my elements are sitting in the center of each page... I need to break myself of that habit next time.

On this page I trimmed a piece of the same black floral paper and then spent some time adding hand stitching details.

Look carefully and you'll see French knots galore plus stem and leaf backstitching.

The last page finishes up with a sentence about how much fun we had!

Chris let me work on this mini album all day on Mother's Day - best Mother's Day ever!

Here is a 7 minute video going through the album and talking about the details!

I hope you are inspired to give this pocket mini album a try! Off to work on another mini album about our most recent adventure to Iceland!