Make a Valentine's Day Album that looks like a Children's Book

We love mini scrapbook albums that use children's books as the cover. But when you don't have the right book on hand, you can make one using KB and Friend's Valentine's Day book covers!

For the mini album above, we used printables from KB and Friends' Etsy shop, and the rest of the embellishments were from our stash of scrapbook stuff.

We started with our printable retro children Valentine's Day books covers.

We chose the book cover with the title "We 'auto' be together," featuring an adorable boy and girl in a red convertible. We printed the front and back covers, then used spray adhesive to glue them to 5" by 7" chipboard.

The inside pages were also adhered to 5" by 7" chipboard. We used store-bought papers to cover some of the pages. For others, such as the bingo card page, we used printables from KB and Friends.

Before embellishing the book pages, we used our Zutter Bind-it-All to create the wire binding.

The fun part was decorating the book. We used a mix of our own printable Valentine's Day embellishments along with store-bought embellishments that we already had.

Make sure you check out the vintage shaker full of mini retro Valentines. The shaker is attached to the inside cover page using a metal binder clip.

Here is the finished product:

We hope this inspires you to make your own mini album using KB and Friends' book covers and retro ephemera.

Inspiring Junk Journals from Luci and Loley

This week's inspiration comes from Gina Gilliam, who turns trash into treasure by making junk journals. She sells them at Luci and Loley. 

For those of you who are new to junk journals, they are handmade scrapbooks made up of reused vintage paper items such as a greeting cards, receipts, textbook pages, flashcards and other ephemera like that sold at KB and Friends. 

Gina is a KB and Friends' customer who combines our printable ephemera with odds and ends that she has collected to create an eclectic and eye-catching look to her works of art. 

Below are pages from a junk journal that she created using our newest cooking-themed, retro kitchen graphics. This kind of two-ringed, tabbed journal would make the perfect holder for recipe cards. The guest check, tickets and milk carton top are really fun embellishments that help give this journal a dose of nostalgia.

Here are the KB and Friends' products that she used for the kitchen-themed journal:

Moving on to more eye candy from Gina, here are some of her other latest and greatest creations. Buy them from  Luci and Loley or get inspired to make your own with printables from KB and Friends.

One fun technique is to use lunch-size paper bags as a base. Paper bags are one of those readily available household objects that give junk journals a truly vintage vibe. That's how Gina created the next three junk journals.

The next two journals feature one of our favorite binding methods: wire binding. You need a special machine, such as a Zutter Bind-it-All, to do this, but, as you can see from Gina's examples, it really gives the junk journals a finished, professional look.

We hope that these junk journals have sparked your imagination! 

Christmas Journal Inspiration from KittyWitty Papercraft

If you're in need of inspiration for making a junk journal, then you've got to see the Christmas journal crafted by Amy of KittyWitty Papercraft.

Amy's almost half-hour video of her journal is chock full of inspiration for the novice to the most seasoned journal maker.  It's worth your time because Amy - who makes and sells journals and supplies at her KittyWitty Papercraft Etsy store - is now sharing her secrets with the rest of us.

As you can see from the screenshot above, Amy started with an adorable children's book to use as her front and back covers. Just take a look at that set of charms and yarn bows that Amy attached to the cover! So cute, and something that would look terrific on any type of journal, not just one for Christmas.

Amy packs her pages with lots of dimensional ephemera to create this really thick journal.

Amy uses a variety of techniques, from pockets to shakers, to create eye-catching pages. And this book uses layer upon layer, as well, to create dimension and volume.

Now, I have to admit that I'm not entirely unbiased with regard to this fabulously fun journal. Amy is a customer of KB and Friends, and she mentions the printables we sell in the KB and Friends' Etsy shop several times.

I'm going to give you a peek from her video of just a couple of our products that Amy used.

First up is the Christmas ornament box top that is part of our Digital Vintage Christmas Package Cards. She turned it into an adorable shaker filled with sequins! When I created this set of printables, I never thought of someone using one of the box tops in such a creative way. I just love this, and it's something that anyone can easily create. Again, watch the Kitty Witty Papercraft video, as Amy describes how she made this.

Next, I'm going to share with you the Christmas telegram from our Retro Christmas Telegrams set of printables.

Amy printed the telegram from our Retro Digital Christmas Telegrams set, and then she tucked it into a pocket along with other fun pieces of ephemera. So simple, and yet so delightful.

Now, I'm not going to spoil the rest for you, so do take a look at Amy's video for lots of ideas on how she created such a charming Christmas journal. And when you're done with that, you might want to wander over to Amy's Website, KittyWitty Papercraft to see other works she has made.

DIY Bingo Card Mini Album

It's easy to make a bingo card mini album using printable bingo cards from KB and Friends.

Bingo cards: The winning ticket for your paper crafts

They are cropping up all over the scrapbook scape: bingo cards!