Sandpaper Road | Wedding Mini-Album | Craft O’Clock Papers

I am thrilled to share with you a photo-walkthrough of a mini-album project I made! This was a project I truly enjoyed! I worked on it a little bit here and there, usually at times when I wanted to just relax for an hour or so.

I started by creating an album cover with some chipboard and 2 “white grid” cover papers. The cover paper has a special coating which makes it durable. I covered my chipboard pieces with the cover paper. Then, I used a smaller size “white grid” cover paper and my Scor-Pal to create my hinge.

Each hinge flap = 1/4″

Space between each hinge = 1/2″

In hindsight, I SHOULD have made the hinges 1/2″ and the space between each hinge 3/4″ . Plus, it would have been beneficial if I would have added an 1/8″ allowance on each page, because my chunky pages took up so much room. I am convinced NOW of the benefit of creating your PAGES FIRST and then creating the outside cover with the hinges and such LAST.

I made all my flippy-flaps and pockets with white cardstock and included magnets for closures as I went along. HOWEVER, if I was creating a POCKET, I didn’t glue the actual pocket piece down UNTIL I had the patterned paper adhered on the base page. Otherwise, I’d never be able to reach in the pocket and glue down the paper.

My waterfall in the front was just a matter of folding a 1/2” flap on each white cardstock piece and gluing down CAREFULLY. Lining up the cardstock in this step is important… making sure the cardstock is lined up when the flaps are down AND when the flaps are up.

This mini-album features patterned paper from the Wedding Dream and the White/Beige Mood paper collections by Craft O’Clock. At the bottom of this post, I include photo-links to everything I used.

The accordion fold-out in the middle page was one of those things that just “happened”. I added one flap. Then another flap to that first one. Then, I thought, “well, I could just pull it out like an accordion if I had just one more flap”. And so on… until all of a sudden I had an accordion flap. It was really fun to decorate and fun to add the little tabs.

I apologize for the lighting in the previous two photos of the accordion… I had to zoom WAY out to fit it all in one shot, and editing the lighting was a little tricky!

Also, I left the outside edge open for each base page. By doing this, I could create additional slide-out pages which can each hold two more photos. The “junk journal set” for the Wedding Dream paper collection has the tabs pre-printed, so all I had to do was cut them out and glue them on. The junk journal set also includes the large pre-printed tag and the corner pocket (which I used on the back inside cover).

I embellished the album with flowers, leaves and decorative cards from the Wedding Dream collection. And I added variety by including some White/Beige Mood paper, as well. Normally, when I create a mini-album, I go wild with flowers and dimensional embellishments inside. But because my album was so chunky already, I kept the inside decorations to a minimum.

I added a few chipboard word accents and also a few sentiments, as well. I love how the last page of the album has the phrase “begin an adventure”.

For the ribbon closure, I had to decide that BEFORE I embellished the front and back covers. I just glued down the ribbon pieces and decorated over top. I added some stenciling to the cover and then lightly inked over top of the dry stenciling, just to make it pop a little.

And actually, you won’t believe this, but the focal point of the composition on the front cover was something I had made months earlier. I made two tags for a creative team project for Craft O’Clock, so I adhered one of the tags on the front over an oval-cut piece of the patterned paper.

The other tag and metal embellishments were from my craft stash. I just painted them with some gesso and Sparks acrylic paint and then rubbed a bit of Opal Magic Wax here and there. To fill in some gaps, I glued a few more fussy-cut leaves.

To see a video walkthrough of this project, click HERE: