Gift Giving...

Although Thanksgiving for the U.S. is next week, many of us are putting together Christmas gifts, trying to get a head start before the mad rush and last minute pick-me-ups.

You Tube has many tutorials on quick gift ideas and I found one that is quite popular in the blogging craft community: The envelope mini album. There are so many but I'm not one to work on a project days on end. I want to see the results fairly soon.

This mini album tutorial can be found here.

The envelopes are a good size and make a small enough mini album that can be taken to friends' or family members' houses to show off - a little quick brag book, so to speak.

For the covers, I cut out patterned designer paper (DCWV - Taj Mahal) - one for the front and one for the back.

On the flap, I adhered die cuts. This is a perfect place for die-cuts or rub-ons. In the video, she actually does some embossing.

I wanted to keep it simple because I wasn't sure if the person I'm giving it to is frilly though she seems to be a clean cut kind of girl. She went to Morocco to meet a guy who happens to be a friend of my husband's. I'll put photos of her and him that they sent us on these pages.

The tag insert has a patterned front to adhere more photos and a plain back for journaling.

For this mini album, I only used 4 envelopes (approximately 7x5"). I wanted to keep it small and simple so that she could take it to work and show her friends photo from the trip.

I actually made a Christmas one first.

I didn't do anything special to the tags, as you can see. Just a place to put photos and on the other side, there's a blank space for journaling.

Lessons learned: Make sure your eyelets match the holes made by your eyelet maker. I used Making Memories and didn't check to see which was being used and the holes were bigger than the eyelet and they sort of kept coming apart once I put the rings in.

These are actual Christmas gift tags I found at Michael's and were only $1.49 whereas the other die cuts usually cost around $4.99 for this quality. I removed the string and just adhered it to the flaps.

Overall, I really like these envelope mini albums. I plan to make more but will make sure holes, eyelets and rings work prior to putting it all together. ;P

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Happy crafting!