Watch Us Wednesday with Becky: Valentine Mini Album

Hello, Becky here and I'd like to wish you a very "Happy Valentines Day" ... tomorrow!  Yes, tomorrow is the day of love and caring, flowers and chocolate, and of course of making memories!  So for today's tutorial I decided to take two different elements of Valentines ... chocolate and memories ... and putting them together into a very cool mini album!

I used this candy box as the 'cover' for my mini album.  It is a $1 box of 3 Russell Stover chocolates, and yes, they were very yummy!  I threw out the brown plastic liner, but kept the white 'honeycomb' heart to use as my main template for the accordion album, as shown below.

Next up I traced the white heart (above) and the lid of the box to make two templates for all the hearts I will use in the project.  I simply traced them onto scrap chipboard and trimmed them just inside the traced marks.

Next I measured the smaller heart (traced from white honeycomb heart) and found it was 3 1/4" across by 3 1/4" tall.  Then I took a sheet of Brown Kraft Cover Weight card stock and cut it into three strips ... two that were 3 1/4" x 11" and one bit of leftover that was 2" x 11".

Using my scoring board, I scored the two strips at 3 1/4", 6 1/2" and 9 3/4", leaving the 1 1/4" on one of the strips to use to connect the two long strip, but trimming one of them off.  You will also need one piece of the cardstock that is 2" x 3 1/4".

Adhere the 1 1/4" end of the one strip onto the end piece of the other strip, then add the 2" x 3 1/4" next to it ... this will give you a smooth page where the two strips are connected.  Once you have done this, you will have an accordion album that looks like this ...

Next you want to take your 3 3/4" x 3 3/4" heart shape (traced from honeycomb piece) and trace it onto each of the pages on one side, slightly overlapping onto the folds.  Here is how it should look ...

Trim the excess (around the hearts) from all the pages, leaving the bits at the folds where the hearts are joined.  Just think of this as if you were making paper dolls in a string where you want the hands to be connected.  Once you have trimmed all the excess, you will have the 'bones' of your album, and it should look like this ...

And yes, that is my very messy work table, but by the time you read this, it will be all cleaned up!   Next I traced the smaller heart onto two coordinating sheets of patterned paper and cut them out.  I did six each, one of red paper with white polka dots and one of a red and white gingham.  At this time I also cut out an extra gingham heart to line the bottom of the box, a large heart of the polka dot for the top of the box, and a strip of each that was 15/16" by 12".

Because the inside of the box is larger than the honeycomb heart, I actually traced the lid (or larger heart) and trimmed off excess a bit at a time to make it fit snugly and flat on the bottom.  Then I adhered the polka dot strip around the inside edge ... you can see the finished interior of the box here ...

Because the lid fits so snugly I had to leave the outside of the 'box' bare.  Next I did the lid, adhering the gingham strip to the 'box' edge, and the polka dot onto the top of the box.

I don't know if you can see, but the tiny edge of the box bottom was a flat red paper, so I took a bit of a glimmery paint and painted the edge to give it a bit of shine.  Now let's get back to the mini album!  I adhered the 12 hearts to the bones of the album, alternating dots and gingham, then I inked the edges with brown ink.  Now it is ready to add my pictures from Valentines 2013!

Now back to the lid!  I printed a vintage valentines image I found somewhere online ... it could be from Pinterest, Flickr or someone's blog.  I can't remember where this specific image came from, but there are TONS of these out there, so just google vintage Valentines and you will find many to choose from.

Last of all I added some pretty white lace, simply glued onto the underside of the box lid.  You can make a mini album of almost any shape or size ... if you get a larger heart shaped box of candy, it would be easy to make a larger album to fit.  You have twelve pages for small photos, and even a bit of space for small bits of ephemera like tickets, rose petals, etc.

I hope you have enjoyed my tutorial today!  It was a lot of fun to make and used the most basic of supplies and tools.  Blessings, Becky