Baby Girl First Christmas Scrapbook

I am not quite finished experimenting with binding systems for scrapbook mini albums. I have the other options ready for the trying but I don't have the time! Despite not having listed any mini albums for sale until I've figured which binding system I like best, I managed to get a custom order for albums!

Based on the Sweet Christmas scrapbook mini album, a lady who has purchased cards from me before wanted to have a couple of Baby's First Christmas Albums. They're not particularly "baby". I just made sure to use some bright colours and some of the same candy-themed papers that you saw in the Sweet Christmas Album. I think those appear sufficiently youthful.

Here's the first one! It's for a girl, so I used relatively more red.

(Click pictures for larger views.)

I made the gifts on the front with patterned paper on cardstock. On one, I used a border punch for the bow. One another, I used a flower die. On the gift bag, I used paper string for the handles. I put the baby's name on a teeny tiny gift tag. I wrote the title with my Brother Scan'N'Cut. That's the first time I've used the pen function on it. The nameplate and closures are Accucut Craft dies that I got on sale. The teddy bear, I stamped, cut out and coloured by hand (with Copic alcohol markers).

The back cover has a pocket-style waterfall made from envelopes (with hinges reinforced with Tyvek). I used my Winterland Tree die by Memory Box twice in this album. It's such a pretty die. I cut the tree in white here, stuck to some adhesive covered cardstock and poured red glitter into it.

I tried something new for me in this album: Swing Tabs. Swing tabs swivel out of the way to grant access to foldout pages. I think it's a fun way to interact with the pages. (Magnets are great too.) The gingerbread man above is an example of one of the swing tabs.

This album does not have pocket pages (by request). I prefer pocket pages because it's an easy way to add space for photos and stories without adding much bulk. In addition, the pockets give me a place to hide the Tyvek hing reinforcement, so the start white Tyvek is out of sight. Best of all, the pockets offer more protection for the photos in them.

Since I was not going to use envelopes for pocket pages and, therefore, had to measure out my pages, I decided to make the album bigger too. This one will fit a handful of 5x7 photographs. My customer does photography, so I thought she would really like to showcase some great photos.

For the binding, I made 3 signatures of 1/4 inch guttered pages. Then I adhered each signature separately to the spine with 1/4 inch spaces between them. So, it looks like a continuous 1/4 inch spaced page range. I used Tyvek to reinforce my page hinges and you can see the Tyvek on the outsides of each signature. That's why I went with white pages: so that I wouldn't have to colour the Tyvek. A non-mini-album maker would never notice it.

If you want to see my first swing tabs in action (and the rest of the album too), click to see the video of this Baby's Girl's First Christmas Scrapbook Mini Album. (P.S. My videos play poorly in Firefox for me, but look fine on Google Chrome.)

The boy version is now in the works!