Taking pictures and storing them is the sweetest way of bearing memories for the long run. Our modern generation does it through camera and Google photos. But, long before technology took over, people used to collect photographs in albums of all sizes.
Old is gold or, as they say. Handmade photo albums still bring more emotion to the ground than anything. Even after all these years, with all the applications running in our palms. In my house, there is a wardrobe piled with such albums, containing pictures of my parents’ wedding, my childhood, family vacations.
Wondering how to make an album as such? One of the most productive things I did in lockdown 2020-2021 is to get inspired by those albums. Keep an eye further to learn how to make a mini album for beginners.
Contents
Mini Album Supplies
You cannot make a mini-album, or any sort of album for that matter, empty-handed. Some art and craft supplies need to be in your collection to fuel the mini album ideas. Here is a list of the things you should be buying:
- Chipboard: It is used to make the base and internal pages of the album. If you have ever taken an album in hand, you must have wondered what the hard paper is about. These are called chipboards which provide the hardness.
The purpose of using such things instead of regular paper is to solidify the album. A normal paper can get torn down easily, along with the pictures inside. Chipboards will protect the album from such occurrences and make it compact.
- Adhesives: Both liquid and semi-solid glues will be necessary for sticking those chipboards and pasting photos on the album. You can buy a glue gun or use the regular sticks for it.
- Scissors and Anti-Cutters: Scissors will assist with cutting the bigger pieces. Anti-cutters are for giving fine and detailed cuts.
These are the basic things one needs to purchase before making a mini album. To make it more creative you can buy poster papers, colors, beads and threads, and other crafty objects.
Some Fancy Mini Album Ideas
Making a mini photo album depends completely on one’s imaginative capacity. No amount of YouTube videos or Pinterest ideas can match the creativity of a human. But, you can also take suggestions from the mini photo album ideas and make something of your own.
Mini albums come in all sizes and shapes. The 4×4 and 6×4 are the most seen sizes. They are easy to carry and store, also cute to look at. Create the album in a way that contains all the memory you want it to carry.
Choose a topic first on which you want to build the album before deciding how to make a mini album scrapbook. You do not want to mix up everything in one album. For example, if the album is about your friends, you do not want to paste family holiday pictures in it.
The topic does not have to be anything magnanimous. It can be anything closer to your heart, something you want to look at during rainy days or store for the future. You can make it dedicated to the photos you took on your last solo trip, or about your favorite rockstar, favorite tv show, and whatnot.
There are regular mini albums for short, and there are the fancy ones. The regular ones look like the ones you must have seen in any corner of your house. The fancy ones are a little different to look at. They contain all types of creativity a person can deliver.
These albums can be either folded or, have many hidden layers rather than a single base and some pages to paste photos. The layered mini albums can contain paper-made windows and threads. Ensure giving a glittery title to your album that will stand out from the crowd and also reflect the summary of the photos inside.
You can either devote it solely to pictures or make some handwriting of your own. Maybe add some headlines or captions with each photo telling the stories behind them. You can make it look like a calendar, assembling under the dates of the photographs. You may also bind the entire thing with colorful thread-like gift boxes.
The next section contains the most awaited detailed description about how to make a mini album for beginners.
Making Process
Now that you have all the ingredients in your hand and ideas in your mind, let’s jump straight to the making process of a mini album. Today we will be taking mini album kpop for an example (I can hear all the kpop fans screaming already!!).
- Building the Base: It is the hardest part of making a mini album. It is the portion that will decide how long the album will last and how appetizing it will look from the outside. The base has to be made in a way that every time you look at it, you want to go through the entire album.
You have to take three pieces of chipboards to make the base of the album. We will be using the 4×4 chipboard as an exemplary piece for the two flaps of the album, and a 1.5×4 chipboard to connect those two. You can use any other size that suits your preference.
Stick the three pieces with glue. Take a piece of paper of your color of choice and make seven sections inside the base with the paper.
- Designing the Internal: Take seven different cardboards or hard papers to stick to the different sections for seven individual kpop singers. You can paste your favorite photos of them on each page. There can be details about each of their specializing talents, concert dates, and your favorite songs from the collection.
You can also decorate the album with stickers concerning the topic. Maybe make some paper cuts giving different shapes that go with such an album.
- Finishing with the Exterior: Give a title on the front cover of the album. The title can be something catchy and furnished with various decorating pieces. You can either keep the album as it is or bind it with glittery threads to give it more of an aesthetic look.
These are pretty much all the raw materials to answer how to make a mini album from start to finish.
Frequently asked question
Getting artist’s block while making a mini-album? Here we will be clarifying some of those slumps for you:
Where to look for mini album ideas?
Apart from making videos on Youtube, Pinterest can be a great source for collecting ideas about mini albums. Pinterest comes with a vast idea about all sorts of arts and crafts. You can keep separate boards pinning down different ideas as well.
It will help you with increasing the horizon of your imagination.
What glue do you use for scrapbooking?
Scrapbooks have more photo pasting than regular mini albums. There can be hidden notes, messages, or another patterned paper pasting as well. If you are not using the proper glue to stick them all together, the photos are more likely to fall off the pages in the long run.
To avoid such occurrences, it is the smarter choice to use liquid glue for scrapbooking. Liquid adhesives get dried in a matter of time. It can also create the perfect holder with the most capacity.
What do you decorate your mini album with?
There are many objects and crafty materials to decorate your mini album. You can embellish the album with patterned paper. There are scrapbook papers which you can use to make words and letters with to paste under each photo in the album.
You can make extra artworks to add in each alternate page of the album. You can also sprinkle some glitters to make it sparkle.
How to recover a mini album with fabric?
Put the mini album on the fabric and cut the fabric according to the size of the album. Wrap the fabric around it with glue. Fold the edges around the album sides and cut off the loose ends. Also, glue the fabric on the album’s spine.
Final words
As we listen to Ed Sheeran from time to time, “we keep this love in a photograph”. To reminisce the love that has been caged inside a photo, a mini-album beats all the other competitors. Creating a photo album or scrapbooks is a splendid pastime and, a great expression of one’s creativity.
A market-purchased album may save a ton of your time, but you will not feel that level of attachment towards it as much as a handmade mini album. If you are a beginner, you may find yourself a bit lost in the sea.
Hopefully, you will find yourself through about making a mini album for beginners.
Last Updated on April 20, 2021 by Timika Sandra
