making a scrapbook

felicity and i made a mini scrapbook of her florida trip it was really easy-- only 12 simple steps! also it didn't cost anything  to make because all you need is paper, glue, scissors, and your pictures, all of which we had already!!

here's how you make it:

step 1: organize you materials-- decide what color scheme you want, put your photos in order, and collect anything you want for embellishments.

 step 2: cut your paper into strips the size you want the pages of your book to be. mine are 3 inches by 8.5 inches, perfect for the wallet sized photos i have. fold each strip in half.

 step 3: design and create two separate pages (or strips). important: only add your photos to the front side of your strip, the back will be glued to the next page. i like to mount each photo on contrasting paper to make it pop. we added some beachy die-cut embellishments to make it even  more creative!

step 4: while each strip is folded in half (photos on the inside) glue the right back side of your first strip to the left back side of your second strip (basically back to front if they are folded closed). now our first two strips are attached to each other. at this point you should technically have 4 pages total. 

step 5: make another page (or strip) fold and glue the left back side of it to right back side of the second page, like before. you will continue in this way until each page (or strip) is attached to the one before. i used 3 different colors of paper for my strips and alternated between them creating an "abc" pattern-- this makes it visually pleasing :)

you will keep adding your pages (or strips) in this way until they are all glued together and it will look like this when it is fanned open: 

it's like gluing birthday cards together back to front. this is what the spine looks like. you can see all the folded edges of your strips: 

step 6: now it's time to make the front cover, binding, and back cover which are all one piece of paper. cut a strip of paper the same width as your pages but a little longer than them. it's fun to use a patterned paper for this part. the paper we picked has beach themed words on it and matches our color scheme of course.

step 7: start by gluing the outside-cover strip on the front of your book and wrap it around the spine. i used a little hot glue on the spine to make it sturdy, but that's optional.

step 8: measure, mark, and trim off the extra bit extending past the length of your book. 

step 9: glue the rest of the outside-cover strip to the back of the book. 

step 10: the fun part-- add captions to your photos and personalize each page.

step 11: lastly, design your cover. we added some seashells we found on the beach with a hot glue gun.

felicity is terrified of the hot glue gun because of a mishap we had a few months ago-- she fell on it and it burned her hair, it was very sad and scary! so she stepped back and let me, the adult (but really i'm more like a big kid lol), do this part... as all kids should do-- hot glue guns are dangerous kids :) 

step 12: (my favorite step) be proud and show it off to all your friends and family, they will love it! 

here are some of our favorite pages: 

thanks for reading, i hope this has inspired you to be creative!

if you have a question about this craft project leave me a comment below and i'd be happy to help!  

i know felicity will keep her scrapbook forever and look at it a trillion times.

do you have an old scrapbook or album from years ago that you still love to look at?  

p.s. we love making little books. if you do too your should check out our endangered animal book by clicking here :)