Through The Year Flower Chipboard Mini Album

Hi Dandi Crafters check out my first chipboard mini album. I hadn't ever made a mini album before. I am not a layout creating kind of gal. Actually this chip mini album is the closet I have ever gotten to a layout. Let me say never having done this before! WOW!! WOW!! It was a lot of fun, but boy is it time consuming. I don't know how many pages are in the average chipboard mini I think mine has a bit more than normal, but since the purpose of this mini album was to see the changes throughout the year I needed to do one for every month. The reason I did the album is that my daughter is really getting into scrapbooking and pictures so I thought that this would be a great way to start off. Even I can commit to 1 or 2 pictures a month. My daughter is very excited about it.
So much went into making this mini album, I used so many items it may be hard to name them all. Never having made a mini album and never paying too much attention to them I think mine is a bit different than most. It wasn't my intention to make mine different, it was just the end result.

For starters, I didn't want to spend the money on chipboard, I like to use cereal boxes when possible to be environmentally friendly, for my mini album however I would have IF there was anything out there that matched the idea I had in my head. I wanted to cover the year so that meant I need at least 12 pages. I had the idea of doing a flower that grew with the year. Now there very well maybe something out there like this but as I said I have never paid attention to mini album books so if there is something out there I don't know about it. I also didn't want my mini album so mini...LOL the biggest page is just under 8 inches round, the smallest just under 7. There are 13 pages in the mini album

How I created the book.
I created the template for the flower mini chip board using my image editor. Drawing a flower with a pedals was nothing daunting for me I can draw a little bit...LOL hehehehe as my boys would say I am not without skills...LOL. Once I had the basic design figured out and the pedals placed like I wanted them, the book pedals grow by one for each month, January starts out with 1 flower pedal and by the time you get to December there are 12 pedals, I imported it into, all you hardcore loyal Cricut fans look away for a minute:hehehe, Make The Cut. I cut out each of the flower page twice in white poster board using my deep cut blade. That took sometime to cut out 26 white poster board pages. I then glued the twin of each page so I could have sturdy double thickness and it would hold up leaving me with of course 13 pages. 13 not 12 because it has a cover. When the mini scrapbook was all cut out and glued it was all worth it because it was so so cute, and the concept of the flower growing with the year was sprinkled with enough, aren't I clever and it really worked thoughts to spur me on to cut out the 26 flower pages in designer papers and glue those on. Making sure that the designer paper was flat down on my mat if I was cutting the back side of the flower pages. It was much easier to flip my paper than to mirror my image each time because each flower page did require that I open a new design because the design grows by one pedal each month. LOL I only ended up cutting the wrong page 2 times. YEA!! me!! LOL
I used the following supplies
• K&CO KP Valentine Designer Paper
• American Girl Super Pad Paper
• Anna Griffin Paper
• Hello Cupcake Doodle Bat Font
• Cricut Cartridge A Child's Year
• Cricut Cartridge Hello Kitty
• Cricut Cartridge Create A Critter
• Cricut Cartridge Stretch Your Imagination
• Cricut Cartridge Doodlecharms
• Cricut Cartridge Home Accents
• Cuttlebug Machine and Embossing Folders
• Make The Cut Software Program
• Lettering Delights Weather Girl
• Lettering Delights Calendar
• Lettering Delights Balloon Craze
• Lion 125 from vector junky
• DtsArt SVG Design Files (that would be me! LOL)
• Embellishments from the following companies
• American Girl Dimensionals
• Recollections Dimensional Stickers Irish Stickers
• EK Sticko Irish Stickers
• K&Co Handmade Sweet Friends
• AMM Occasion-alls Bauble Gums
• glitter
• vinyl
• Window Cling
Each month has a little place for journaling and a picture or 2. Most you have to open the journaling area to see the pictures and journal area. All the month calendars are LD Calendar and I used  Hello Cupcake Doodle Bats to cut out the monthly calendars.

The cover was created using LD Weather Girl and Cricut Cartridge A Child's Year for the date. I cut the date using chipboard aka around here as cereal box. LOL

In January I used LD Weather Girl, the snowflakes are also from that collection. The journaling mat and picture mat are svg's that I created with my image editor and cut out using Make The Cut.

February was perfect to use the LOVE from Cricut Cartridge Home Accent. The little scallop heart is just one of the hearts I cut out from the designer paper I used on the opposite page. Again the journaling tag card was an svg that I created. You might recognize the heart with wings from Take Out Tuesday svg file that I offered. It was a popular download. The hearts are just some stickers from one of the companies named above.

March was the hardest month for me to create I don't know why. I made the journaling svg and the Lucky Title Mat, which again you might recognize as last week's Take Out Tuesday. The rest are stickers that I purchase for this project because I was drawing a blank...Whew glad the whole project wasn't that hard. LOL

April was super easy, that one came to me quickly. I knew I wanted to use a bunny svg that I created.

I also printed the bunny out on window cling. I love to use window cling for a cute sticker effect but it seems an undiscovered treasure in the crafting community at least in the parts I hang out in. It is so fun and you get so many fun looks from it too. It's like ready to go vellum, except you don't have to worry if the glue is going to show. LOL The cloud and showers are from LD Weather Girl. The rest are stickers from one of the companies I name above.

May, well we have reached our birthday month so that was again real easy. I used LD Weather Girl again. I could have drawn my own little girl or I could have used either of the 2 Dress Up Cricut Cartridges however I used LD Weather Girl because one I find their new svg files easy to work with and 2 it looked like my daughter. LOL You don't find my daughter without a head band in her hair. The hair style is so perfect. Even my boys said hey it is a mini sister. LOL The journaling tag is again my svg. I had seen a few sites with cupcake cards but I have so many cupcakes that I have created over the years it is really hard to justify buying any. The gum drops are svg of mine too.

June was just a fun month to create. I love the quote and printed out to be used as my journaling tag. It seem so carefree and summer-y to me. LOL The Hot Air Balloon is from LD Balloon Craze. The clouds are from LD Weather Girl. That collection has a lot of great svgs in it.

July I again used the LD Weather Girl set. I cut out the journaling tag from a stamp svg I made up and I just added vinyl stars all over the place. Simple and fun just like the 4th of July.

August, and sweet summer is beginning to set and our minds turn back to thoughts of school but not before we have a bit more fun. The summer title is just one I made by welding a fat font together. The ice cream cone is from Cricut Cartridge Stretched your Imagination.

The journaling tag for this month is one of my favorites out of the whole mini album. I just took a bunch of art that I had previously drawn for different projects and put them together with some summer words for fun, interesting, word art. I then printed it out again on window cling and cut it to fit my journaling tag.

With September comes school so this page was a no brainer too. For the journaling tag I just used a card from Hello Kitty Greetings Cricut Cartridge. It was a perfect journaling tag for this month. I LOVE LOVE the apple on the Cricut Cartridge Doodlecharms so I used that on the adjecent page. Her school mascot is a lion so I used black vinyl and put a lion on the apple. It looks great! The lion came from vector junky.

October is always a fun month. This one practically created itself. LOL I used Cricut Cartridge Create a Critter for the pumpkin card. I did a bit of editing to it to get it to look like I wanted it to look and work.

On the opposite page I used my window cling again and cut out a ghost I had created long ago and almost forgot about. Since I wanted the ghost to be a subtle I just inked the sides and drew in a few detail using a sharpie marker. He just looks super cute sitting on the page. The Boo is also window cling. Are you getting the impression you need to get some window cling? I hope so you will have tons of fun with it! I used a sharpie marker to write Boo with the Cricut. How fun is that Boo?

November was again another month that was easy for me, although I will be honest at this point what I was thankful for was that I was almost done! LOL so thankful that used a Sharpie Marker in my Cricut I wrote it out....on say it with me...Window Cling...get yourself some! I got to use that cute cute turkey from Create A Critter. He is so darn cute. The pilgrim hat is a Cricut Cartridge cut too but you will have to forgive me because at this point I don't remember which Cartridge. I probably got interrupted in the middle and had to go be Mom or Wife or some other real life happening collided with my crafting life. LOL

Ah December and here we are again at Christmas Time. Boy that came around fast. Look at that SWEET SWEET Snowman, isn't he beyond cute! It is from LD Weather Girl. That is such a great versatile svg set. You should go check it out! The snowflakes are in the LD Weather Girl set too! The sticker are listed above I am sure. I had them for forever. It was nice to get to use them. The present journaling tag is from Cricut Cartridge Hello Kitty Greetings.

Well that is it. If you are still reading this, frankly I can't believe it. This was a super long post! Well if you are still reading it, I should try to reward you for your stick to it-ness, kinda like me and this mini album...LOL
So if you are reading this tell me on this blog post what month was your favorite and why. I will give 3 loyal followers, because if you read this whole post you are loyal...LOL the svg download file so they can create their own flower mini album. MAKE SURE I HAVE SOME WAY OF CONTACTING YOU! IF NOT I WILL CHOOSE SOMEONE ELSE. This isn't just good for a through the year theme. It would be great for baby's first year, for your pregnancy, recording the first year of marriage. You can do a school career. The fact that it has 12 really opens up the possibilites of what kind of album you can create with it! I will draw 3 winners using a random number generator next Saturday March 5. Good luck!