Mini photo albums

I was trying to think of a small gift for my son’s two teachers and came across acrylic photo albums at the craft store.  These albums consisted of five 4” acrylic circles held together with a metal ring.  I first cut circles slightly smaller than the acrylic pages from decorative paper, punched a hole with a hole punch and glued them onto the pages, front and back.  My original plan was to make some tiny kanzashi flowers to put on the cover but once they were made I couldn’t get them to look the way I wanted without a lot of extra fussing that I did not have time for.  Instead I decided to use some purchased self-stick embellishments from the craft store.  I added some stickers that read “photos” on the cover and was finished.  With some extra time some of the pages could be pre-embellished.  The recipient can add their own pictures to the album and end up with a small, portable brag book.  One of these would make a great gift for a grandparent.   I am already planning to make several more of these.  I saw these flowers the other day and fell in love with them, particularly the ones called Gallery Roses (toward the bottom of the page).  I think the creative possibilities are limitless.

I teach the crafts each year at my church’s Vacation Bible School.  Each year one of the crafts is a picture frame into which I insert a picture of the child’s class.  While trying to come up with ideas for this years’ crafts I came across some acrylic frames at Oriental Trading Company.  Since I had just been working with one of these albums I was struck with the idea to let each child make one page and attach the class picture to this page.  My plan is to provide paper circles, markers, stickers and the like for each child to decorate the page as they wish and then attach the picture as well as a hanging ribbon through the top hole.  These albums are 6” circles, slightly larger than the ones I have been working with.  I’ve ordered several extra for my own use and will post pictures in the future when I get those albums created.