Le Mont Saint Michel Mini Album


Tuesday, September 5, 2017

I started this mini album back in the hotel when we were moving from Germany to the states this past July so you can see it's taken awhile to finish - I just kept adding pages!! That's the beauty of mini albums though, you can keep going or call it good even after a few spreads! The cover is made from Turn the Page Paper 23 - I trimmed a 4x6" section and simply stitched through the printed lines using the same color of thread. I machine stitched the Thickers and mini alphabet Sticker title in place and the album is tied shut with some floral printed Ribbon. Everything you see with the exception of just a few things is from my Turn the Page collection!
Here is the flip through so you can see how this album looks IRL:

There were SO.MANY. photos from our day at Le Mont Saint Michel that I wanted to include, I had the hardest time narrowing them down. In the end I created three entire spreads solely dedicated to  2x2 mini photos and every other spread includes a full 4x6" photo of my absolute faves.

The base is made from smooth white cardstock sheets that were trimmed into 6x12", folded into (3) 4" sections, and then accordion folded. I made six of these accordion pages and then attached each one together with Washi Tape to make the world's biggest accordion album base, lol. On the first spread I added a photo to the right side with the date we went stamped onto a label, etc, and the left page is typed and printed journaling onto a floral Journaling die cut on top of a bunch of Stamped leaves!

I rounded all the corners so that they wouldn't get bent and torn over time and from being handled. This spread contains an insert that I attached with Washi Tape and stitched through it. The embellishments that I made didn't quite match and I found one more photo I wanted to add, so this insert was the perfect solution. The left side is a photo with typed/printed/trimmed journaling and then this side of the insert is a 4x6" piece of Paper 22 with a white washed background and a butterfly Ephemera Die Cut on top along with a tangle of thread a-la Missy Whidden.

On the left side, this is the other photo I wanted to include :) Peace out haha. The right side is a-la Steffi Ried - I love how she stitches through her lines of embellishments so I tried that with the Sequins.

I made these patterned paper flowers while we were staying with my parents and didn't have immediate plans for them. They fit nicely here! Can you spot the little French knot and flower Sequin in the center of each one? They were fun to make :) On the right photo all I did was slide on a Pennant Paper Clip. Easy peasy!

This next spread has lots and lots of 2x2 photos! Half are glued right down and the other half are attached with Washi Tape so you can lift them up and read some captions/journaling. Embellished with patterned paper, chipboard, and puffy sticker butterflies! I love all the colors.

Here I fussy cut all these sentiment bubbles from a paper in the 6x6 Paper Pad and adhered them with foam tape. In Photoshop I copied/pasted some journaling from my blog onto a photo, printed it out, trimmed it down, and glued it in place!

No photo on this spread! It's probably where I meant that other photo to go but it must have slipped out at some point and I forgot... Anyway! I used a lot of Wood Veneer and machined stitched around each one. I left some of the spaces empty so I could write journaling. I like mixing hand written and printed journaling in my mini books.

Another full 2x2 photo spread! Told ya I have a hard time narrowing down photos! In between each photo I trimmed a super thin piece of patterned paper and stitched it in place. I added a "moments" die cut with transparency "embrace the" stickers above for a sweet sentiment.

I die cut a design that reminds me of the window in that 2x2 right above! I backed it with lots of 6x6 Papers. One of my dilemma's at the beginning was I had lots of vertical and horizontal photos that I wanted to include full-size, but it seems silly to have to keep rotating the album for them to be oriented the right way. Sooooo! The front side of the album is all vertical and then once you get to the end, you flip it over and everything is horizontal! This colorful back page makes a nice segue.

This other half of the album contains a lot more mixed media: acrylic paint and watercolors. I made a sentiment page from a mix of all the different kinds of alphabets found in Turn the Page and stitched a floral die cut trimmed in half to the top and bottom. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the kingdom in Tangled was directly inspired by Mont Saint Michel?

The top half of this spread is 2x2 Paper Pad pieces trimmed a little bit smaller and then I tied a bow from each of the 5 Ribbons - the 6th one (bottom right) is the colorful striped ribbon tied backwards. The bottom is a cute photo of Jane with the magical mountain still visible in the background as we drove away, and then topped with various embellishments.

Similar to what this spread looks like on the opposite side, I added embellishments inside each section and journaled in the larges one. Jane hugs animal statues! It's just what she does!

Here is the final 2x2 photo spread and once again I glued some and attached those with captions with Washi Tape!

I made a banner for my little sister's baby blessing gathering last weekend and I love the patterned papers she chose. I used the scraps to punch circles and folded them over bits of white string to make banners. I think I'm going to show how to do this technique in Paige's Pages 14 at Big Picture Classes - coming in September I believe!

On this second to last spread I used watercolors (I would have used ink pads but my colored inks are still with all our stuff - but BEST NEWS EVER our stuff is getting delivered this Friday!!! Better than Christmas!) to Stamp butterflies and I actually love the soft and pretty look the watercolors make! So maybe it's a good thing I didn't have access to my inks! More typed/printed/trimmed journaling on top and I didn't do anything to the photo. I may go and add something later but for now it feels finished.

For the last spread I used my cloud trio cut file and before peeling them off the mat I watercolored over them. Once dry, I used spray adhesive to attach them to the top and wrote my closing thoughts with a white pen.


All-in-all I am still LOVING making mini albums!! I am so inspired to keep documenting our travels so I'm going to start the next one right away!

3 comments

  1. So many lovely ideas to help create a mini album! I love how you managed to combine the horizontal and landscape photos-such a lovely idea. A great way to show off you new Collection too!

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  2. I'm always looking for different ideas for mini album , especially with the number of photos I take , layouts are just not enough . Loved it !! Thanks for sharing .

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  3. You are simply amazing!!! This is gorgeous! LOVING the photos, the colors and love love love that photo of Jane with the cow!! She is such a ham!! LOL!!!!!

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