Sweet Mother's Day Mini Album | Hip Kit Club

Hi friends, all this week the Hip Kit Club design team are sharing beautiful Mother's Day projects in honour of those that mean so much to us, our Mums!

My kids are in their early 20's and the first few years of their really adult lives have brought me so much joy and admiration for the people they've grown into. So I decided to make a mini album using photos of just them and me (since the theme is Mother's Day), and add some meaningful quotes from Pinterest, and also use some of the Paige Evans 2x2in phrase tags from the April Pocket Life kit throughout.

Just a quick note before we go any further that the ribbons, lace, embroidery thread and sequins in this project are from my own personal stash. Everything else is from the beautiful April 2019 Hip Kits, and yes that does include those exquisite charms from the Maggie Holmes Sunny Days collection!

Since my photos were all taken at different times and in different situations, to create cohesiveness throughout the album I printed them all in black and white. I also printed them all at 1.5in wide on their shortest side, and layered vellum behind nearly all of them. Because my mini is well, mini, this creates a soft layer without being overbearing on such a small scaled project.

There's a lot of photos from here on in, so I won't talk too much further, but if you have any questions please leave them in the comments and I'll come back to you!

One of my challenges for this project is to use the negatives of cut files. These sweet clouds are part of the April Freebie cut file, and I separated them out from the rest of the cut file and moved them close to each other. So that I could make a shaker pocket out of them I duplicated the clouds then flipped the second set horizontally. Then I spaced them far enough apart so I would have enough room to die cut the heart pages. 

Once the clouds were cut on my Silhouette I placed my two pieces of card together, aligning the clouds (this is the tricky part which is why we flipped one set horizontally!) A little piece of washi helped to hold them in place while I ran them through my Big Shot. Then I pieced them back together in the usual shaker pocket-making method. I think they turned out pretty cute in the pink cardstock!

This is another negative of a cut file and it looks just as pretty as its positive! I trimmed the cardstock I cut it from into a strip and placed the very middle of the letters back inside. It didn't quite fit into the heart but that's okay, I just trimmed a little extra corner piece around the 'H'. That's what's so great about mini albums, the little bits and pieces sticking out from the edges!

To make this interactive element I folded some patterned paper in half horizontally and ran it through my die cut machine so that it didn't quite cut the entire heart out on the left side. This is important to make the flap to hold it together. 

There are some papers from Shimelle's Sparkle City collection in this kit, and Shimelle does the most ahmazing branding strips!! The pink and purple polka dot in the photo above and the tiny bunches of flowers in the photo below are both branding strips from Shimelle's papers.

I tucked in the photo for this page with a few extra pieces and held everything in place with a paperclip.

I created a little pocket for this page to place a few bits and pieces into. I cut strips from one of the 2x2in Paige Evans swatches and folded them in half to make tabs to pull out each of my two photos.

I also trimmed down two cards from the Pocket Life kit as fun elements. I stitched some pretty lace onto the end of one, and will add some journalling onto the 'afternoon' tag (both of these photos were taken in the afternoon of their given day).

I thought this was such a great quote to finish off my album. It's so true that raising children is a busy, crazy, frustrating, rewarding, fun, challenging time. But by the time they get to be adults you'll look back and wonder where the time went.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope if you're a Mum you have a wonderful Mother's Day this Sunday, and I also hope you have someone in your life who is a Mum that you can make feel special too!