I really am a no fuss scrapper.

I have my materials in front of me and I get on with it.

Today, with this mini book it was no exception.

When my kit came I really loved the 12×12 transparent sheet that came with the paper addon. I knew I would make some kind of feature with it, but wasn’t sure what.

I did think about adding a photo or embellishment in each square and attaching it to a super large wooden clip board that I have and adding it to my gallery wall, but I knew I had a mini book blog post coming up here , so kept this option at the back of my mind too.

When it came to needing to make the mini book for this feature, I still had a fair amount of my February DITL Kit leftover and these are always perfect for mini books, so then I just needed to decide what I wanted this new mini to be about. I’ve made so many Florida projects this past year, but then I had an idea. We have a US Roadtrip coming up next month. I’ve always enjoyed making mini books ahead of a trip before. Making something with blank spaces that can be quickly and easily filled upon our return.

So with that decided…..45 minutes later I was looking at this.

People often seem intimidated by mini books. They don’t have to be massive scary month long projects though. The word ‘mini’ just about sums it up for me. It’s a mini project.

So intrigued why this only took 45 mins???? Then I’ll show you how I literally threw this together.

As you know I started with the lovely 12×12 acetate.

The idea I initially had was to cut up each square, but I thought that may be a little too mini, so instead I trimmed it down to 2 squares per piece.

I was left with this.

8 pieces.

It was now time to grab my scraps leftover from my DITL Kit.

I swapped my staples over in my stapler so that they were green and just used up my leftover DITL cards, attaching each one with green staples.

I also used some other bits from the kit like these mini yellow alphas.

The cards were too large. This A6 size was cut in 2. I loved the lines and the heart on this one.

Look how perfect this was. The box was able to work around the ‘True Story’ part.  I cut around the card but didn’t throw away the piece with the heart. I knew I would use that. Once cut around and trimmed off, this was stapled to the acetate.

I repeated this over and over using up the cards and some of the papers from the kit.

There were some other fun pieces from the DITL kit to use.

Doesn’t that heart patterned DITL card look fab under the good stuff acetate square??

I really did have so much fun doing this. I ended up with this. I added a few other pieces from my DITL Kit. It felt so good using them up.

I now needed to put this book together. I stuck each piece on the back of another with some double sided sticky. I hadn’t covered every single square completely so some were still transparent in places, but carefully teaming them up worked a treat and I accidentally ended up feeling even happier with the final result.

By the way…. remember that little strip leftover with the heart? If you see the bottom left square above, you will see how I ended up using it. I stapled it at the bottom  of the square and slid a circular tab down the front with a little pva glue on the back.

To put the book together I punched a hole through each page at the top and added a simple large book ring.

Here you can see each piece as it finally looks.

By sticking each page back to back, I ended up with some really lovely results. The ‘Loving This’ square with the little strip at the bottom with the heart that I showed you before once backed up ended up with a yellow patterned background which I love.

I used up all my tabs by stapling to the top of each page. I’m a sucker for adding bits and pieces. I also found that I ended up with some parts of the DITL cards showing that I didn’t really want, so I just used something to cover them up, like where ‘family’ is stuck is part of a red word underneath that just didn’t make sense.

On the other page where it says ‘Remember’ the card was left quite long and highlights the square ‘Today’ below. I then added a little patterned paper from the DITL kit to cover the rest of the ‘Today’ square and the strip above ‘We Loved This’ was stuck on at the end which just finished it off perfectly.

Once I get back from the trip, I’m going to print off small square photos to stick to the squares and journal with a black sharpie.

More DITL scraps used here as you can see. Just bits and pieces all randomly stapled on. I had a DITL card loved over from an old project that thankfully I’d kept. All that is left is a piece of white card and the small wording ‘this photo’ and a teeny heart. I’d originally stapled this across the centre of the square so that it now read ‘Love This, this photo’. Once backed up the yellow patterned paper accidentally struck again and once more, finished off the page even better than I had planned myself.

I love happy accidents!!

I really am so excited about this new mini book. I can’t wait to finish it when I come home after the trip and the best bit is, it will be so quick to do so as it’s already made.

I really hope that you enjoyed this super fast mini book. It just goes to show that you don’t need hours and hours to make something and it makes me so happy that this was made with my leftover kit.

As an extra treat, I also have a sweet mini book from Doris for you today.

I’m sure Doris took longer than 45 mins to make her’s but there’s something extra special about the book that she made here.

Doris saved napkins and confetti from her Mom’s birthday party with the idea that she would use them in a mini-album that she wanted to make to remember the event. She ended up using them to create the cover.

She said , ”The large glassine envelopes in my latest kit were the perfect size to fit the napkins. I slipped two over the napkin, sprinkled in some of the confetti, stitched it closed, then stitched on some additional pages made from patterned paper. I am keeping the inside simple with photos, tags, and enamel shapes”.

That’s such a unique idea Doris. Not only are you making something special to remember the special event by, but you are adding these extra keepsakes from the party. I love that idea!

Thanks so me for joining me today. I really hope our ideas inspire you.

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Lisa Saunders