Fun Friends Mini Album
18 March 2009
Author: Lori Evers
What means more to a tween than her Best Friends? This mini scrapbook album is the perfect way for your tween to always keep her BFF’s close. Your tween can have these cherished memories and more very easily and with just a few supplies. What’s best is that this project shows how easily your tween can create a fun friends mini album on a limited allowance!
Why spend a lot of money on a scrapbook when you can easily make one? For so little, you can have so much! Have your tween use chipboard or heavier cardboard for the album cover. The front and back covers of the album can be any shape. Use scraps of fabric or paper to cover the album or get a little more creative and make the entire cover with Perler beads. Simply use one of the large Perler templates and create a unique design. Creating albums from specific themes or shapes in mind will help make the project more personal to any experience. For example, to remember a recent vacation, make an album a camera or luggage shape. The possibilities are as big as your imagination. Just remember to leave out a couple of beads on the left hand side so that you can attach the front and back covers with D-rings. The Perler beads once they have been ironed add some sparkle with glitter or add a few brads through the holes for an extra touch.
To design the inside pages, use the same template to trace a sheet of paper and cut out their pages from scraps or extra cardstock. Instead of buying pre-made alphabet stickers, use inexpensive templates to create letters, use stamps or even cut and collage from magazines or newspapers. Make dimensional stickers by punching different shapes from cardstock; layer them together with 3D Foam Adhesive dots and use markers, glitter or chalk to add that little extra pizzazz to handmade stickers. Tweens can also doodle or sketch their own embellishments in their scrapbooks.
Extra details that tweens can make, with parental assistance, are handmade paper embellishments from your scrap pile. Sort the scraps by color, and toss them into the blender with a little water. Once you have a thick, pasty pulp, you can press it into candy molds and set it in the oven on warm until all the water has evaporated. Once dry, add glitter or acrylic paints to the handmade paper embellishments for that “extra touch.” Simple projects like this will enhance the crafting experience for your child and encourage them to recycle from your scrap bin. Just think how special your friend will feel when they receive this fun friends mini album as a gift from you. Especially, when they know you made it from scratch!