We gave this to my father-in-law for Father’s Day this year.
This is a great grandma/grandpa gift that you could use for their birthdays too!

I made him this little mini album 7 years ago, and he LOVED it.  And for the last few years, he has reminded me how much he loves his photo gifts.  He even dropped a hint that he could use an updated one.  Yes, my scrapbooking has been slacking in recent years, but I decided to dust off some paper.

The last book was a store bought accordion album/card thing.

But this time I made my own mini album with:
1 piece of 12×12 patterned paper (cut in half)
3 pieces of 12×12 cardstock (each cut in quarters)

First I made the binding by gluing my 2 pieces of 12×6 cardstock together to make one long piece that is 6 inches tall.  Then I accordion folded it every 1.5 inches.  I find a bone folder makes the folds extra crisp.  You can trim off any excess, depending on how many pages you are going to want.

Then I glue in my pieces of 6×6 cardstock.

You will end up gluing the cardstock to each other.

When you are at this point, you have all of your pages in, and from the inside you can’t see the binding.

Now you need to glue your binding flat.
I put glue in each fold and then put it under a heavy stack of books overnight.

My kids came up with their reasons, “why they love grandpa” and I found some pictures to represent that.

Really not much embellishing, a little paper and chipboard numbers and photo corners.

And there you have a mini album that is easy enough to do with your kids.
It takes a little time, but I’m always glad when I make the effort to give a sentimental gift.
My father-in-law loved it!

I wish I could give a source to where I got this idea.  I actually remember doing something to this effect in a church camp as a teen.  These ideas just get recycled you know!

I’m thinking I can recycle this idea into:
vacation albums
birthday gifts
baby’s first year mini album
and teacher gifts!

I can’t wait for you to see all of the scrapbooking that Kathryn has been up to!
It is blowing my mind!