If you have ever looked at the beautiful mini-albums that our hybrid creative team members make for gifts or holidays, and thought, “I want to do that!” …but then your brain kicks in and reminds you that you live in a teeny, tiny apartment with 5 other people and not enough room for a dining room table (No? That’s just me then? OK, well)…

…I would like to propose a solution: a fully digital mini album! It’s perfect for those of us who love the idea of creating a cute little mini-album, but who are lacking in space, tools, supplies, or even simply the “courage to tackle hybrid or paper scrapping”!

If you search for “mini album” here on The Digital Press blog, you will be rewarded with a bunch of articles that are all full of fantastic ideas and inspiration. Here are just a few examples of the gorgeous mini-albums I found…

Mini-albums are handy for all sorts of things:

• Creating a separate album for a family vacation
• Creating a special gift for someone
• Documenting a special holiday
• Documenting a specific family tradition
• Capturing a sports season or extra-curricular event
• Documenting major life events such as adoption, graduation, birthday, wedding, birth, or death

You could create a mini album for just about anything you want to… but they are especially helpful when you want to highlight a certain event, or create a gift using your crazy awesome scrapbooking skills. 🙂

Technically, you could simply throw together a bunch of pages and call it a mini-album… but if you look at most of the examples in the link I posted, above, you’ll likely notice that mini-albums usually have a consistent flow. That sort of cohesion does not just come together on its own… but instead, it takes a little bit of thought and planning.

After thinking about my own album creation process, I broke it down into the following steps:

1. Planning
2. Organizing
3. Filling & Finishing
4. Printing

These are not hard and fast rules, mind you… but I have found that they help me to get through the process quicker and end up with a final product that I love!

Over the course of several tutorial posts here on the blog throughout the coming weeks, I will walk you through each of the above steps for creating a digital mini-album. Today, we are looking specifically at the first step — planning.

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Step 1: Planning

I have found planning to be the most important step in the process of creating a mini-album. It sets the stage for everything that comes later, gives you a definite direction, and makes the actual production of the album go like clockwork. For me, this is key to actually completing the project — something which, I admit, I often struggle with otherwise.

Planning allows you to decide ahead of time what you want the finished album to look like, and ensure that there is consistency and cohesion throughout the pages.  I encourage you to pull out some paper, or make a document on your phone or computer, to jot down your planning notes.  That way you can look back at it later, or make adjustments if needed.

CHOOSE YOUR SUBJECT

Decide what your album is going to feature before you even start.

Back in the days when I paper scrapped on a regular basis, I always made mini-albums of our vacations. This was mostly because the kids (including the kid in me) loved to look back on those short moments in time that seemed so perfect. Other times I have made special “I LOVE YOU” books for a relative, or special teacher. And when we adopted our middle child I made a special album just for her that walked through the entire process.  She loves it and thumbs through it regularly.

Your subject matter can be anything you like. For myself, and for the purposes of this blog series, though… I am going to be making a very specific kind of mini-album. Last fall, my youngest sister lost her baby girl in a still birth. It was heart-wrenching and difficult, but she very much wanted to take pictures and remember everything she could about her little angel. So one sister took pictures, and over the last few months my youngest sister has curated the ones she wants and asked me to make them into a book: a mini-album that celebrates the short life of her youngest daughter. How could I say no?

CHOOSE A SIZE/ORIENTATION FOR YOUR ALBUM

Depending on your chosen topic, decide which type of album would be best.

You can print your pages at home, at a local print shop, or have them printed as a complete book using an online print service. There really are a multitude of choices here. One thing to note, though… a mini-album is just that — mini (in size) — so it should be smaller in size than a “Year in the Life”-type book, etc. (both in dimension, and in number of pages).

Things to consider when choosing your album size and style:

1. How do you plan on printing it? If using a print shop, or online book print service, what are the requirements?
2. What size restrictions do you have? For instance, do you have the ability to print “9 inches wide” (etc.)?
3. What is the orientation of most of your photos? Are they mixed, or are they primarily landscape/portrait?
4. Do you have a lot of journaling to include? The smaller the page size, the more difficult it may be to read lengthy journaling.
5. Will you use digital templates to help you achieve a layout style you like?
6. If this is a gift album, what are the storage capabilities of the recipient? (i.e. do they have room to store your gift?)
7. What do you LIKE?

In my mind, templates are one of the biggest benefits to doing a digital album, and The Digital Press offers a wide variety of templates from which to choose. Templates that are geared specifically to album-making can be found HERE.

Here are just a few examples of album-based template packs that I have enjoyed working with in the past…

Working with an album template pack is especially helpful in constructing a mini-album because these template bundles usually contain a variety of templates in a similar style… and thus, they already work well together.

The use of templates does not have to completely dictate your page size, however. If you look on the blog HERE you can read a number of articles containing tips for transforming your templates to fit into different-sized pages.

For myself… I plan to print my pages separately at a local print shop and then put them in a SNAP album using plastic pocket pages. This will allow my sister to add additional items to the album as she sees fit. To do this, my pages will need to be sized at 6″ x 8″. I decided to use The Great Escape by Anita Designs to give my album pages some consistency — and also to allow me to quickly pull the pages together…

This set offers a lot of variety… from full photo pages, to full-page journaling spots. I will, however, need to re-format them a bit to work in the binder I chose for the printed album. I will show you how I did that in PART 2 of this tutorial series (the ORGANIZE portion of the series)!

DEFINE YOUR COLOR SCHEME

Color plays a huge role in our lives. It is a well-documented fact that certain colors are linked to specific emotions. While this is somewhat cultural, there are several universal connections as well. For instance, bright colorful patterns are usually connected to playfulness and energy, while blues and greys tend to have a more calming effect.

If you are unsure what color scheme works for you, you can always browse Pinterest or do a Google search to get ideas (for instance, you could search “Winter Colors” or “Ski Vacation Colors” to get ideas for a ski trip mini-album). The Digital Press blog also has some fun information about color, if you want to learn more.

Things to consider when choosing colors:

1. What is my subject matter? An album about a trip to the beach will look nice with tropical colors (whereas an album about a funeral… not so much).
2. Do my photos “need” a certain color? For instance, a mini-album documenting a sports team will need to use that team’s colors.
3. What colors are in my photos? Or will I potentially use black and white photos?
4. What emotion/feeling am I trying to convey?
5. Do these colors look nice together? We don’t want clashing pages in an album.
6. Is there a certain digital kit you really want to use? What color scheme does it employ?

For my album, I need a little bit of flexibility. My sister requested some girly colors, and the first part of the album will have some happy pregnancy photos… so a more upbeat feel to those pages will be great. But I also want to be able to create a more subdued & calm feel to the end of the book (not dark and brooding, even though the subject matter is sad… but rather, somber and thoughtful).

I realized that Anita’s template pack (the one I linked, above) came with some great colored solid papers, and I thought those colors would work pretty well for what I wanted to do. They play nicely together, but also offer the flexibility I need. Using those colors, I searched through the store and found this additional kit, Mood, also by Anita… which uses similar colors and some word art that will work well for this subject. I can use my color scheme to recolor items that need it, and I can always add more paper/elements from other kits if I decide there is something missing.

DETERMINE SPECIFIC ELEMENTS NEEDED

Thinking about the theme of your album… try to decide if there are specific elements you NEED or WANT to use. This does not mean that you have to plan out every embellishment you will use, but just that you decide on some thematic elements that you can use to connect your pages to the event you are documenting.

For example, if you are documenting a Disney Trip — you would want to include some Disney-inspired elements. Or perhaps you’d use some flip flop stickers and a birthday cake for a pool party-themed mini-album. Planning these things out, ahead of the actual construction of the book, will allow you to be proactive and have all your supplies handy when it is time to create.

You can also go ahead and decide which generic element types you might use. For instance, because my book centers around a baby girl — I will be including lots of flowers, ribbons, and buttons. All generic, but easily associated with baby girls. Notice that the kit I chose to work with, above, already has a lot of these types of elements. I can find additional elements, as well, if needed — but these will be my base for my album.

ASSESS ADDITIONAL PLANNING NEEDS

Feel free to brainstorm other areas that might need fleshing out a bit as well. I realized that my sister might want to add things… like cards she received, or her own handwritten thoughts, or even drawings from her older children. I decided to include a few “blank” pages for these types of additions.

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As you can see, it really does not hurt to spend some time planning out your project — as it will actually save you time, later, when you begin working.

The areas listed above are the things I like to plan-out prior to building my mini-albums. Having concrete plans on these topics help me to have a strong idea of where I am going with my project… and those plans also allow me to concentrate more on the creation of the album when that time comes.

Now that we have begin to get everything all planned out… we are well on our way to creating our digital mini-album this spring! Keep a look out for PART 2 of this series — coming here to the blog really soon!

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Erin is an artsy crafty kind of girl who is currently dabbling in far too many things, but is working hard to enjoy every moment of it, while avoiding the rain, which is difficult due to living in the land of many rains. She is slowly learning to use her smart phone to capture all the fun little bits of life that would otherwise go unremembered in the busy craziness that is raising a family!

 

 

I’m a big believer in trying to make my more traditionally-styled digital scrapbook pages, well, traditional! Sure, there are a ton of things you can do in the digital realm that simply aren’t possible with supplies that you’d buy at a craft store, but I’m always looking for ways to create the illusion of something being “real.” I wanted to share with you an easy way to re-create the look of a stamped or painted title on your page that’s layered among papers, photos, or other flat elements.

Let’s stop for a minute and think about this: If you had a stack of papers or photos spread about on a table and you grabbed a wood block stamp, inked it up, and stamped away, what would the words look like? Some might be a little transparent, with patterns or images peeking through. Maybe the edges are fuzzy. If your stamps go over the edge of two or more papers or pictures, does everything line up exactly? Yes, folks, these are the kinds of things I think about when I’m creating my digital layouts and trying to get the finished product to look as realistic as possible.

As I placed this title on my page, I found that I wanted it sitting on the patterned paper and spilling over to the background. Realistically speaking, if this were truly stamped, I would see some of the pattern on the orange/brown paper bleeding through, and I’d see the bottom edge of the paper, too. As things stand right now, that’s not the case. Here’s how I changed that.

Step 1: Create a duplicate layer of the title, wordart or alpha.

Step 2: Place one copy of the title immediately above the paper on which the title sits; place the other copy underneath.

In my example, I have a copy of the word “Choice” right on top of my patterned paper, and another copy above the lines layer.

Step 3: Clip the title to the patterned paper. This will allow the bottom edge of the paper to be visible and reveal any shadowing you might have.

You could leave things just the way they are and be done. Personally, I still tweak things a bit more, and here’s why: Remember what a truly stamped image might look like if you were using ink and paper? I would still see some of the pattern on the paper coming through. The same goes for the dashed lines on the background paper. Read on …

Step 4: Lower the opacity of the title layer that is clipped to the patterned paper, and play with blending modes to allow the pattern the bleed through.

I like to use Multiply or Linear Burn, depending on the color of the paper. This step is really a little bit of trial and error, so just play and see what you come up with. I ended up with a blend mode of Multiply, and Opacity of 65%. I also lowered the opacity on the bottom copy of the title (the one that’s sitting on top of the dashed lines), just a little, to allow the lines to peek through ever so slightly. These formatting options are in my Layers Palette (I’m using CS6), but you could also use the toolbar menus if you’re more comfortable with that, or if your desktop is configured differently. From the toolbar, I would select Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options to access these choices.

Once again, you can stop here, if you like … or not.

Step 5: Select one of the two title layers (either one is fine), and nudge just that layer a little to one side. The amount of movement really is very small; it’s just enough to add to the illusion that the stamping is on multiple layers.

TIP: Although not necessary, one last thing that I like to do is select the title layers, both of them, and link them together.
This way, if I need to move or resize the title, both layers change in unison.

Credits: Choices by MEG Designs

Credits: Real Life by Calista’s Stuff

As you can see in the second example that I’m sharing here, your title could spill over onto multiple photos and papers. Even if it seems complicated, the steps to creating the look of a stamped or painted title remain the same:

1. Duplicate.
2. Position.
3. Clip.
4. Blend and Opacity.
5. Nudge.

I hope you’ll give this a go!

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About the Author Kat Hansen is a creative team member here at The Digital Press. A Director of Human Resources by day, she loves the opportunity to spend a few hours each evening being creative. Vacation memories feature pretty heavily in Kat’s scrapbooking pages, as well as her health and fitness journey. Kat has quite the sense of humor (she “blames” her father for this), which she incorporates into her journaling and memory-keeping.