Technique Class - Mini Brad Album

I have always enjoyed making themed mini albums. They are wonderful to give as gifts, they sell well at craft fairs and they are really quite easy to put together. A lot of people avoid making them because of the expense or the difficulty of binding the pages together, but I'm going to show you how to make a little album that is bound with just a piece of cardstock and six brads!

Requirements:

10 A5 pieces of cardstock

6 long brads

Extra cardstock for making tags and binding

Co-ordinating patterned papers

Co-ordinating embellishments and ribbons of choice

Border punches of choice

Double sided tape and glue

Bone folder

Stylus

Piercing tool

Corner rounder

Trimmer and /or craft knife and cutting mat

Ruler

Pencil and eraser

Fine point marker

1. Measure 7" from the right hand side of each piece of A5 cardstock (landscape orientation) and score lightly with a stylus. Make another score line slightly to the left of the first to give the cardstock extra movement on the fold. These pieces of card with form the pages of your album.

2. Decorate the front cover as desired. Leave the area to the left of the folds, the spine, free of any decoration. This will be the area where you will bind the book and should be left blank on every page.

3. I want to have journaling tags that slide in and out of the top of each page of my album. Begin by making five tags from the extra cardstock and decorate them with journaling lines, patterned papers, ribbon, etc. Decide where you would like your first tag to slide from.

4. On the back of the front cover, position the tag where you want it. Run double sided tape along the bottom and sides of the reverse side of the front cover, leaving an opening for the tag to slide in and out of. Make sure you leave a little under 1/4" around the tag so that it slides in easily. Do not put any double sided tape directly over the score lines as this will inhibit the folding motion of your pages.

5. Decorate page two of your album.

6. Adhere the front cover to the second page with the double sided tape you added in step 4.

7. The tag should now slide easily into the pocket you created between the front cover and the second page.

8. Continue decorating each of your pages, and create pockets between each one. Remember to alter the position of each pocket so that all the tags are visible when the album is closed.

9. Adhere page three to page four, page five to page six and so on until the book is complete. Each page should now have a pocket for a tag to slide into.

10. To bind the book, cut a piece of cardstock the same height as the spine of your album. Use double sided tape to adhere it to the front cover, directly to the left of, but not covering, the score lines.

11. Flip the front page over and run your stylus down the binding directly beside the second page. Fold the binding over the second page and press the crease firmly with the bone folder.

12. Make a second score line on the binding, a little less than 1/4" from the first, and press the fold flat. (If you had more pages you would place the second score line further away to give the pages more room in the binding. The amount of pages you add to your album is limited by the length of the brads you choose - the longer the brads the more pages you can add.)

13. You should now have two folds on your binding and it should look like the picture below.

14. Turn the front cover back over so that you are working on the front of the album. Measure and mark even spacing for six brads on the part of the binding that will remain at the front of the album. I placed two brads 1" from the top of the page, two brads 1" from the bottom of the page and two brads in the centre.

15. Use a piercing tool to make holes where you marked the location of the brads.

16. Now use your front page as a template to pierce all the other pages. Keep the pages neatly lined up when you are making the holes or your pages will end up crooked.

17. Once all your pages have been pierced it's a simple matter of pushing the pins of the brad through each page in turn, starting with the front cover. When you have pushed the brads through the last page, open the pins and tap them flat with a small hammer. Notice that the brads go through the front of the binding and all the pages but not the back part of the binding.

18. Trim the piece of binding so that it reaches the score line on the back cover. Adhere it over the open brads with double sided tape as shown in the picture.

19. Replace all the tags in the pockets and your album is complete!