This tutorial by KB and Friends teachers you how to make a "spooktacular" Halloween mini album out of old, extra-large puzzle pieces.
Our hybrid scrapbook mini album features our own “Costumed Cutie” over the years in his favorite Halloween costumes. You can create a puzzle-piece album of your own in a day using a Halloween digital scrapbook kit (and bits and pieces from other kits) to make your scrapbook layouts.
Materials:
Halloween digital scrapbook kit
14 5″ by 7 ” digital scrapbook pages, printed at home on high-quality, matte photo paper or printed by a photo service
7 extra-large jigsaw puzzle pieces, measuring about 3.5″ by 5″. (We used an old Mattel “My Size Puzzle XL.”)
2 one-inch book rings, silver
Several colorful ribbons, cut in 8″ lengths
Sandpaper
Ric rac and ribbon, cut into 12″ lengths
Hole punch
Scissors and craft knife
Spray adhesive, acid free
Optional: Sculpey clay, green and black
Acid-free glue
Instructions:
Begin making your Halloween puzzle album by creating 14 scrapbook pages, each on a 5″ by 7″ canvas with a portrait orientation. Use photos of your child wearing his or her favorite Halloween costumes over the years. Make sure that you position your photos so that your child’s face is in the middle of the page so that the face does not get cut off when you paste your layout onto a puzzle piece. We used black background paper as the backdrop for every page with a photo. We primarily used digital scrapbook graphics from the Halloween Fun kit by KB and Friends. But we also used a few elements from KB and Friends' Bloomin’ Crazy and Signs of Spring kits. Get creative! Just remember that any text or word art that you use on your page could get cut off when you adhere the page to a puzzle piece.
For the front cover, back cover and three inside pages, we didn’t use any photos on the layouts. We used word art from the Halloween Fun kit to create the title, Costumed Cutie. We also used word art on the back cover and inside pages.
Use your home printer to print your layouts or have a photo service print them. Before printing your layouts, you must resize them so that they measure 5″ by 3.5″ Print them or have them printed on matte photo paper.
Use the adhesive spray to glue the prints onto the puzzle pieces. Use the spray adhesive in a well-ventilated area. Be careful not to get any adhesive on the front of your prints. Take care to keep your layouts in the correct order. Once you’ve glued one size of a puzzle piece, use scissors or a craft knife to carefully cut it out in the shape of the puzzle piece. Then glue the back side of the puzzle piece.
After the adhesive has dried, gently sand the edges of each page in your book. This helps to give the book pages a smoother edge.
Use a hole punch to punch two holes on the left side of your puzzle-piece pages. Make sure that you punch the correct side of each chipboard page. You need a sturdy hole punch and plenty of pressure to punch through the puzzle piece.
Thread the book rings through the punched holes to hold your book together. Dress up your book by folding 12 ” pieces of ribbon and tying them to the book rings.
We finished off our book by making two small witch hats out of Sculpey polymer clay and baking them according to the directions. We made sure that our hats would fit perfectly onto a puzzle-piece page. Once the clay witch hats cooled, we glued one witch hat to the cover and the other to an inside page. This last step is optional.
