Friday, August 9, 2013

Tutorial: Upcycled Children's Book to Monsterously Cute Mini Album

by Melinda Spinks

It's Friday and our final day of mini-album inspiration and I'm going to share a step by step look at upcycling an unused house-hold item. Hi it's Melinda here and my project today is the transformation of a pre-loved children's book (we had two copies) into a fun birthday book for my little man. The concept of the birthday book is to take a photo on each birthday and write down a list of things that meant something to Teddy on the day ie favorite toy, favorite songs, favorite food, best friend, etc



I added a little Take Note Mini Pocket with Teddy's birthday details written on the note card inside and have you spotted the gorgeous new 'Sprinkles'.


So let's get started...
This little book was a fabulous shape and design for creating the birthday book but you could use any shape book and add your own tabs etc. I gave the book a light sand just to help the adhesive stick.


I gave my page a light spray with adhesive and set it aside for a few minutes to reach the tacky stage.


Next step is to place the book face down on the reverse side of the patterned paper and then cut around the outline of the book. I decided to use the Petite Prints collection so I could create a colour wheel affect around the book.


You need to leave a small margin between the pages at the inside spine or the book won't close properly. I decided to cover the gap with some washi tape in the same colour scheme.


It's a good idea to ink the edges in a similar colour to hide any rough patches that may occur. Doodlebug have a wonderful range of ColorBox inks to co-ordinate with the patterned paper collections.


For the cover I used my all time favourite patterned paper... Colorwave from the Take Note collection as it tired all the tab colours together.


Each tab represents each year of Teddy's life so I color-matched the age with the tab as I wanted the central panel to be the main focus rather than the numbers.


Final step was the decorating...


Now I just have to wait until Teddy reaches each milestone before I can fill in the other pages, although I'm not in any hurry to wish his life away from him too quickly. Thank you for stopping by today and I hope I have inspired you to have a re-think of what is sitting around your home that could be given a new lease on life.

10 comments:

  1. Brilliant! Those colours are so perfect and your little subject is just the cutest!

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  2. stunning! loove the idea and the bright colour look great! fabulous minibook!

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  3. Wow this is fabulous and super cute..totally love it..xx

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  4. I love this! What a great idea and a fantastic keepsake! Thanks for sharing!

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  5. Oh my goodness! This turned out so amazing and so adorable! I once picked up a children's board book for cheap and covered it as a mini album, but it didn't have nearly the fun shape of this one! I think we're all going to be flocking to used books stores and Ebay looking for this one. ;)

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  6. Super cute mini. Thanks for sharing, Johanne L.

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  7. This is one of the cutest things I've seen in a while. And now I'm off to go in search of a copy of that book, or one similar.

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  8. Love the shape of the book! He will love it!

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  9. Love this! I think it would make a fantastic baby gift!

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