New 52 | Week 20: Mini-Book

This past week I made my first mini-book in my whole scrapbooking history. You may ask, "How is it that you've never made a mini-book before?" I don't know, it just never occurred to me to make one. My scrapbooking history involves making something like THIRTEEN 12x12/8.5x11 albums as gifts to family and friends in a span of weeks in 2003. Quitting paper scrapbooking after that because I became so burned out. Picking up digital scrapbooking in 2006 and never looking back. Well, I'm happy to tell you that I have jumped back into paper scrapbooking through Project Life and through mini-books now.

There are several topics that I'm going to blog about in the next few weeks that I'm very excited about. I won't do them injustice by trying to talk about all of them in this blog post, but I will tackle them each individually in the coming weeks. These are:

• Why I scrapbook.
• How blogging has helped my memory keeping and scrapping tremendously.
• Why I love mini-books versus 12x12 or 8.5x11 page layout scrapping (when I'm not doing digital).
• My craft studio set up.
• Where to purchase physical scrapbooking supplies economically.
• My favorite scrapbooking tools.
• Online classes I have taken or am taking.

My first mini-book project is a 4x6 mini-book birthday gift for one of my best friends, Sally.  It's sort of a "year-in-the-life" type of book that chronicled all our adventures together in 2010.  Last year perhaps was not the best year for her, she went through some life changes that were difficult.  I wanted to show her that even amidst the tough life circumstances, she had fun and she has friends who love her.  I wanted to help her remember the good times.





The process for my first mini-book went something like this:

1. Went through my 2010 Year-In-Review blog post and found every entry that involved Sally and wrote down the dates and activities in my project notebook. 
2. Went into my Adobe Lightroom software and looked at the dates that I did stuff with Sally in 2010 and tagged all the photos with "Sally" that I wanted to use for the project.  (I wouldn't have to do this if I had kept up with tagging all year long, but I didn't.)  Then I just filtered by the "Sally" keyword and all my photos for my project returned on one screen.  Then I exported the photos to my "Sally Birthday Mini-Book" project folder on my computer.  There they were, ALL the photos I needed to make the project all in a folder!
3. Decided which photos to print out 4x6 at Costco, and which photos to make smaller and print them out at home to cut them.
4. Picked out my supplies, and bought some if I didn't have something I needed.
5. Spending about 10 hours in my craft studio working on the project while listening to music.  It was awesome!

I really REALLY love how the mini-book turned out, and Sally loved her gift! When I gave her the book on Sunday, she started getting teary-eyed. She had forgotten about many of the things we did together, because she did not take any photos. It was a joy to see her flip through the mini-book and REMEMBER the good times she had, even in a tough year. Then she told me that she honestly did not have the desire to take ANY photos last year. But I did it for her. Now she has a book that summarizes our friendship and all the fun things we did together in 2010. When I realized how much joy the book brought her, I thought to myself... THIS is why I scrapbook. So I can document our days here in life, so that we can REMEMBER the good times with friends and family, and be reminded of our blessings even during tough times. Scrapbooking is awesome!

Here are some more pages from the book.













If you'd like to see the whole book with my notes about supplies or techniques, you can go to my Flickr set here.

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About This Project

New52 is a project started by Peppermint and I to encourage each other and others around us to try something new every week in 2011. The "new" each week doesn't have to be something big. It could be something as simple as ordering a new dish instead of old standbys at your favorite restaurant. It's simply opening your heart up to NEW possibilities.

Don't worry if you're late getting started on joining in. It's totally OK if you miss a week here or there. We encourage everyone to keep an open mind about trying something new. This is a life project, and a photography/blog and even scrap challenge if you wish. If you participate this week, please leave a link to your blog post in the link list below. You can also post images to our New 52 Flickr Group! We would love to see what you were inspired to do.