Amberg, Germany Mini Album (Heart Squash Mini Album Tutorial)

I have a new mini album to share today! This one features my Heart Squash Mini Album cut file and the Let Your Heart Decide collection by Pinkfresh Studio.

First, here is a video showing how to assemble the base of the Heart Squash Mini Album and then a flip through of my finished book about our day in Amberg, Germany. For the cover I machine stitched around the edge then painted a layer of gesso on top. I splashed black watercolors around and then created a cluster of embellishments including mini alphabet stickers to say "amberg". To keep the album closed I cut tiny slits into the sides on the front and back and wrapped baker's twine around with a bow tied over the embellishment cluster. For the inside I cut three base pages from smooth white cardstock and then cut all the inner pieces from the Let Your Heart Decide patterned papers. Before adhering them in place I pierced holes for stitching. I did a chain link stitch through the square pieces and was planning to add hand stitching to the half heart pieces but decided it would make the album too thick. I like the texture the holes add though.

On the left most square seen above I only placed adhesive on three edges to turn it into a pocket since that photo of the skinny red building has a lot of interesting history behind it that I wanted to include. I kept the embellishing pretty simple and simply added a sticker or two to every half heart section and tucked a few tab stickers here and there.

If a sticker was too long to fit one section I let it go across two sections and the album still collapses.

I wanted to include way more than four photos so I had to think of a way to do that. I figured out how to machine stitch photos and cardstock squares together using a zigzag stitch and then they fold over each other into a single layer - you can see what this looks like in the video at the beginning. Here are all four main photo sections opened up all the way to reveal hidden photos and journaling. Here is what the album looks like when opened, without opening the interactive photo bits.  The photos are held shut with velcro adhesive dots. Details of opening each of the four interactive photos. I was able to include about 20 photos this way and journaling to go along with the pictures. For the journaling I just copied and pasted the text from our blog post recap of Amberg into a new document, changed the font to Remington Noiseless, printed it out, trimmed it into strips, then adhered the strips with liquid glue. That was probably the most time consuming part of this whole process. If there were empty spots on the journaling squares I filled them in with stickers and trimmed the excess.

Here is the open album with all of the photos opened. So many layers!

I completed this album over about 5 days, working on it in spurts, but if I had to put an actual time on it I think it took about 6 or 7 hours. Not too bad and it was tons of fun and so easy with the help of the Heart Squash Mini Album cut file! I can't wait to see how you use it! Let me know if you have any questions, thanks for stopping by!

SUPPLIES: Cut file: Heart Squash Mini Album by Paige Evans; Patterned paper, stickers, epoxy stickers, die cuts, vinyl stickers, puffy stickers: Let Your Heart Decide collection by Pinkfresh Studio; Die cut machine: Silhouette Cameo 3