Aly Dosdall: instax mini album

We recently took an awesome family trip to Northern California over spring break. One of our favorites ever! While traditional 12x12 scrapbook albums are my go-to format for memory keeping, for vacations and special events sometimes I like to make a mini album full of photos from just that one trip or event. This time I decided on an Instax Mini Album and I'm so happy with how it turned out!

We R Memory Keepers makes these adorable bitty albums that fit Instax Mini prints perfectly. They come with 10 photo sleeves and you can purchase more separately if you need them.

If you like the look of Inxtax photos but don't have an Instax camera or printer, don't worry! You can use Photoshop and this free printable template from my crafty friend Natalie Wright to create Instax-style photos.

I chose to decorate my cover, but you can leave yours blank. I like setting the tone of the rest of my album with a fun cover. The gorgeous new Flower Girl collection was perfect for my spring break instax album.

Since the photos and photo sleeves for this album are so tiny (about 2 1/8 x 3 1/4 inches) I turned to the smaller pieces of ephemera, cardstock stickers, and puffy stickers in the collection. Love me some puffy stickers!

I love to add more organic elements too, so I mixed in a little wood veneer and some jute twine on the tags. The neutral colors also help break up the bright colors of the paper collection.

I created a couple of shaker pockets with my Fuse tool using the photo sleeves provided. I filled them with some confetti I made with my DIY Party Confetti Punch, some die cut ephemera pieces, wood veneer, and my latest shaker pocket favorite--clear glass microbeads. They're small like glitter, but don't stick to the inside of the photo sleeve like glitter does. And I love that the clear beads allow a little peak into the photo behind them.

I love my mini album pages to have a bit of an eclectic feel, with varying heights and lengths, so I added some tabs I punched out with my We R Memory Keepers Tab Punch. I also added some journaling tags that I made with my DIY Party Tag Punch.

I punched holes in the sides of the tags and added some printed journaling strips. I prefer to print my journaling sometimes because I'm not a big fan of my own handwriting. Plus, the strips act as a great design element as well.

What I love about mini albums like this is you can put one together quickly and easily, and then you're done scrapbooking your trip or event. No pressure and stress about a full 12x12 album. No feeling overwhelmed about memory keeping. And they're really fun to browse through too!