tutorial | a mini-album, journaling prompts and my bind-it-all

This happy little mini is laying on my craft desk right now making me smile! Blue is not usually the first color I go for, but recently this blue and green combination is making me really happy.

I started by lightly brushing blue paint directly onto my bristle brush and then swishing it around on the canvas Zutter Bind-it-All cover. I didn't want a heavy coverage, I wanted to be able to see the canvas texture. I then wiped the extra paint off my brush and swished it around on the cover some more. In the end, I dabbed the cover with a paper towel so that some of the natural canvas color would show through in some areas. I really like the way the cover looks a little like clouds in a dreamy sky. 

I laid out my journaling prompts {free download} and decided which of the million photos we have that I wanted to use with each prompt. Most of the photos I used are not current, rather photos chosen to fit the memory that came to mind when looking at all the prompts. You'll notice the labels here are squared off, but I decided to round the corners of these labels to use in my own album. 

I used my Round-it-All to round the corners of the pages and the cover...and yes, it will go through this heavy duty 1/8" canvas art board. The Bind-it-All is probably one of my favorite all-time tools! I quickly realized that the blue o-wires that I wanted to use, and won from Sarah's blog, would not be large enough to hold the thicker cover and all the album pages. I used my white 1.25" o-wires instead. And the blue would have been sooooo nice, too. Next project, for sure!

The punched scallop and chipboard flower are there to cover up the back side of the eyelet snap from the front cover. I contemplated embellishing the pages with the journaling prompts but decided that simple was best for this project, so my format throughout is journaling prompt on one page and photo with simple embellishment on the opposite page.

Ta Da! It's finished in just a few hours. And that's a good thing with the kids at home wanting to do their own projects. Go ahead, shake your head...you know what I mean.

Be crafty and have some fun today!