Carol Hartery's Creations: Envelope Mini Albums

Hi Everyone!

One of the projects I have been doing lately is creating envelope mini albums. I've made some that may be used as recipe albums and others that may be used as photo albums. All of them are open-ended so the recipients will decide how they will use them.

I started out by watching some videos on You Tube. One of the ones I really like is at this link. My first album took longer than I would care to admit, but now I can create an album from start to finish in about an hour.

Here are some tips that might help you. First of all you do not need to purchase expensive thick envelopes. I learned that the hard way. The first envelopes I bought were from Staples and cost me $4.99 for a package of ten colored #10 envelopes. They worked perfectly, but then I thought I would try some envelopes from another store that cost me about .75 an envelope. Well, it turned out that those envelopes were actually too heavy to score perfectly and too heavy to lay flat in the album. I didn't like the look of that album so I ended up tossing it out-happily before I had decorated it. So all of the albums I have made are with the envelopes from Staples. They come in a variety of colors, one color per package. I used pink ones for some baby girl albums, pale blue ones for some baby boy albums, green ones for some recipe books, and a red one for a Minnie Mouse album.

I cut all of my papers before I start to assemble an album. I also put Scor-tape on the backs of all of those papers before I begin the album. Once the envelopes are bound as an album I just keep turning the pages and adding paper to them.

Here are some of the pages from the Minnie Mouse album.

That zig zag paper is the back side of the cover. I did not use chipboard for the cover. I just used heavy duty double sided patterned paper. I am guessing the chipboard would be more durable, but I am happy with the weight of the covers I made.