Oct 21, 2011

Sunday Featured Mini Albums, Tutorials 1 Comment

MINI BLINDS MADNESS!

Hi everyone! My name is Sunday Grennan, blogging for OutstandingMiniAlbums.com from Dallas, Texas. How are y’all? It’s great to be posting here. Thanks, Jessica, for the opportunity to reach out to your readers!

Today I’m going to show y’all a scrapbook technique I call the MINI BLINDS. It can be used on almost any scrapbook page, big or small. Ready for something different & fun? I hope so, here goes.

The MINI BLINDS technique will offer you a few things in your mini album:

• a fun, different design for your album pages
• a way to use both sides of a beautiful patterned paper in an album
• a way to add strength to the paper so the pages are strong enough to hold photos & embellishments on both sides

For this project, I am making a super hip, hexagon shaped album out of the papers & embellishments of the Mischievious Line by My Mind’s Eye. I used the paper kit that comes with 9 sheets of 12X12 double-sided card stock & a coordinating accessory sheet. Love. I am using 9 pages of the Mischievious paper as my MINI BLINDS pages & mixing it in the album with 5 pages of burlap to add some texture & color to the album. Look how cute it came out! Can you see the real plastic spiders on there? So cool!

Tools you’ll need to create your own MINI BLINDS pages:

• Pencil
• Ruler (I use a centering aluminum ruler for the strength & usability with an Exacto knife)
• Scissors
• Exacto knife
• Giant eraser
• Manila folders (colored cardstock)

Steps to Creating MINI BLINDS:

1. You’ll need three hexagons of different sizes to create these pages. Hexagons can be made in Word or Elements & printed out. I made my templates out of cardstock so they were strong enough to trace a bunch of times.

• Hex #1 is 9.25” (across from one point across to opposite point)
• Hex #2 is 7.5” (same as above)
• Hex #3 is 7” (same as above)

2. Trace Hex #1 onto each sheet of pattern paper you’ll need for your album. Use a light pencil for all tracing so you can erase it later. Cut them out. (I am using a simple sheet of pattern paper & a black Sharpie for my examples for clearer viewing. My completed pages in my book out of Mischievious will be shown below.)

3.  Use a ruler to draw lines from each point of the hexagon across to the opposite point. You will draw three lines that cross in the middle, giving you a center point.

4.  Take Hex #2 & trace it onto the center of Hex #1, using the lines you just drew as guides.

5.  Place your ruler along one of the first 3 lines you drew across Hex #1 (horizon line), with the center of the ruler lined up to the center point of the hexagon.  You will be drawing columns perpendicular to the horizon line, so be sure your columns will be drawn the way you are happy with on your paper.

6. Measure out 3/8” on either side of the center point & mark those measurements on both the top & bottom sides of the ruler along the horizon line. These measurements will mark out your first column, lining it up in the center of the hexagon.

7. From each of those points, measure out ¾” all the way down the horizon line, marking points again on top & bottom of the ruler.

8. Take your ruler & Exacto knife & connect your dots cutting lines through your measurement points giving you a bunch of columns perpendicular to your horizon line. Stop your cuts at the edges of Hex #2, which will leave a border between Hex #1 & Hex #2.

9. CAREFULLY erase your pencil marks, as not to rip your MINI BLINDS. Whala! Repeat these steps on each piece of your patterned paper, set them aside.

10. Grab your manila folders & trace Hex #3 on each one. Make one Hex #3 for each MINI BLINDS page you made above. Cut them out with scissors. I use manila folders all the time for its strength & cool color – it goes with everything & can be inked & painted – but you could use any color cardstock instead with the same effect.

12. Carefully insert a Hex #3 into each MINI BLINDS page by pulling it under & over each alternate blind.

FABULOUS!

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A Few TRICKS to My MINI BLINDS Album:

To complete my album, I wanted a very natural & earthy feel to it since it is about our trip to the pumpkin patch. Here are a few fun things I did to enhance it, giving it more dimension & to fit the look I was going for:

• Inked the edges of my Hex #3’s & photos with permanent black ink before I inserted them into the MINI BLINDS. This gives it everything some dimension & pulls the black color through the album.
• Machine stitched a tight zip zag in black along the outside edge of each of the Hex #3 as well as along the burlap pages. Aside from looking cool, it will help adhere the burlap strings that are very loosely put together in its original form.
• Used plain ol’ masking tape at the binding points on each page. This reinforces the holes punched through the paper to hold the black rings.
• On some of the pages, I stuck the photos into the pieces of the mini blinds for a fun look.
• Used both 4X6 photos & wallet size photos in the album. It moves your eye to change the pace of the book.
• I added a few library cards using wallet sized photos & the same simple zig zag machine stitching. I journaled with short sayings on the back of each library card funny things about each person.