Shine Bright Star-Shaped Mini Album by Heidi K. Lewis


Tuesday, April 20, 2021

 Hey there scrappy friends, Heidi K. Lewis here to share a Whimsical star-shaped mini album. The album features six different star cut files, including the Shine Bright cut file as the cover page. Whenever I am in a creative rut, I like to browse through Paige's cut files for inspiration. The fun variety of star cut files caught my eye and inspired me to document a compilation of my husband’s night photography. All of the pages in the mini album are made from the Whimsical 6x6 Paper Pad, available at JoAnn, or the whole collection can be found in the AC digital store - Whimsical Digital Collection.

To make the cover for the mini album, I sized the Shine Bright cut file to 5.5 inches and cut it out of a foiled paper from the 6x6 Paper Pad. I also cut out two outlines of the cut file from vellum to make a shaker pocket. I used my sewing machine to stitch around most of the cut file and the two pieces of vellum. I filled the pocket with star and moon glitter and then sewed the pocket shut. I stitched a straight line across two of the star points, so I could punch holes in the cover without a glitter leak.

For the first page, I cut out the Stars in Star cut file from star-patterned paper and then covered the entire page with a title made from Thickers. Then I secured all of the Thickers with my sewing machine to enhance longevity of the album. The second page features a star-shaped photo layered with a border made from the Concentric Stars cut file. To make the shaped photo, I printed my picture on 5x7 paper and cut out a star (sized to 4.9) with my Cricut. All of the photos in the album are bordered with paper from the 6x6 Paper Pad.

Page 3 features another star-shaped photo embellished with chipboard stickers from Whimsical and Turn the Page. Page 4 is made from the Diced Star cut file backed with acetate. I love how you can see the next page through the acetate overlay. Speaking of the next page, the fifth page features another large photo embellished with chipboard stickers and puffy stickers.

Pages 6 and 7 feature more star-shaped photos embellished with chipboard stickers. For the "whimsical" page, I used a complementary red paper to emphasize the bright green in my photo. The opposite page features a monochromatic color scheme to match the colors in the photo.

Page 8 is made similar to my other photo pages, but this time I used the Diced Star cut file behind my photo to create some variety with my photo borders.

To make page 9, I cut the Star Star cut file from rainbow paper and backed the cut file with a photo of clouds. The Whimsical collection has lots of crafty elements, which inspired the title for the page. 

Page 10 is another photo page embellished with a border from the Concentric Stars cut file and chipboard stickers.

Page 11 is one of my favorite pages in the album. I cut the Geometric Star cut file from rainbow paper and embellished the page with chipboard stickers from Turn the Page and star pieces from the Embellishment Mix from the Memory Explosion Box at Michaels. Cutting an elaborate cut file from patterned rainbow paper looks amazing without a lot of effort.

Pages 12 and 13 are another double page spread featuring embellished photos. My photos often inspire the overall style of an album. I kept the embellishments pretty simple throughout the album to reflect the simplicity of looking at the stars.

Page 14 was made in a similar fashion to all of my other photo pages. One of my favorite embellishing techniques is to make the stickers look as if though they are part of the photo. For example, I overlapped branch stickers over my tree branches and made the bird look as if though it is sitting in the tree.

Page 15 is another one of my favorite pages in the album. My album was mostly finished except for this page, when Paige’s new Wonders collection arrived on my doorstep. I couldn’t resist using it right away and made a page covered with both Wonders and Bloom Street Washi Tape. The page is embellished with both Turn the Page and Whimsical, so I have 4 collections all on one page and it makes me so happy! Rainbow always goes with rainbow, so it is easy to mix and match Paige’s collections.

For page 16, I repeated the technique of layering stickers directly on top of my photo. I love how it looks like the phoenix is flying into the sun. Page 17 features the Concentric Stars cut file cut from rainbow paper. Most of the cut file pages throughout the album are left plain because I really wanted the cut files to shine without covering up the pretty cut files with lots of photos.

To make the back cover, I covered a piece of rainbow paper with modeling paste applied through a star stencil (Paige has a Star Confetti Stencil). Applying modeling paste to patterned paper is a technique that I learned from Paige that is super easy and looks awesome.

I hope this project shows you that by repeating simple techniques such as cutting a fancy cut file from rainbow paper, you can make an album that really shines bright. Hope you stop by again soon!


SUPPLIES: Patterned papers, 6x6 Paper Pad, stickers, Thickers, die cuts, embellishments: Whimsical Digital Collection; Die cut machine: Cricut; Cut files: Shine BrightStars in StarConcentric StarsDiced StarStar Star, and Geometric Star by Paige Evans

Location: Idaho, USA / Instagram: @heidi.k.lewis / Facebook: Heidi K. Lewis / Pinterest: klipheid09

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