It's a Creative World: FAMILY Mini-book...

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FAMILY Mini-book...

Hi Mandy here again,

Not so long ago I bought one of those 'word' mini-books spelling out 'f-a-m-i-l-y'. I decided it would make a lovely gift for my Gran's Birthday & I turned the bare grey chipboard into this mini-book...

It's embellished with ribbon, crochet flowers, buttons, bling & hand-made acetate butterflies (the PDF is downloadable at the end of the post). I planned out what would go on each page, beginning with my Grandparents as young people, then their wedding and birth of my Dad etc.... all the way to my brother's wedding last year. These kind of books start with really small pages, then get longer at the end of the mini-book. I took this into account when planning the photos & wrote a list, jotting down what I planned to put on each page. I realised I'd need some extra space so made three extra 'half pages' to go between the 'letters' of the book...

Then I sorted through my old photos and covered the chipboard with patterned paper, not worrying too much about all the different colours in the photos on any one page. I knew I was going to use a photo taken in the snow so used blue patterned paper for that page but for the rest I used pp from the same range (mostly K & Co. 'Urban'). I inked around all the edges with brown chalk ink & laid out the pages and photos to get an idea of how the mini-book would look.

Many of my photos were precious vintage photos & too big for the mini-book, so I made copies and touched-up any scratches in PSE5. I then re-sized the photos to roughly how big I wanted them in the mini-book and printed out a few A4 sheets onto quality photo paper...

On the 'A' page I wrote a dedication to my Gran and added an acetate butterfly embellishment with 'bling'...

For the journalling in the rest of the mini-book I used my 'Making Memories Tag Maker' with glittery tag shaped frames and tucked the journalling tag in behind a photo. Here's a look at each double page...

We are looking forward to the arrival of a new family member in Autumn so I left a space for my Gran to add a photo of the new baby.

I like how these books are heavy-duty & can stand up on their own...

Below is a close-up of the binding rings, tied with ribbon & lace and hung with beads & little silver charms ... a teapot, spoon & teacup.... (my Gran is a tea lover!)...