Photos of the Completed Album:

Supplies Used To Create This Mini Album:

• Maya Road Snowflake Shaped Sheer Coaster Album. This album is available for sale at both Twopeasinabucket.com and scrapbook.com.
• The Alphabet Letters in the Title are American Crafts Black Tie Velvet Thickers Letter Stickers. You can but them (on sale!) at A Cherry on Top Scrapbook Shoppe, or from or From
• Shortbread Patterned Paper From the "Spring and Summer" Collection by American Crafts (Oh, the irony, to use it in a winter-themed clear album! Hahaha.)
• Decorative Scissors
• Hambly Snowflakes Transparent Patterned Overlay
• Bloom Twirl Frosty Lace Cardstock by KI Memories
• The 2 transparent blue snowflake embellishments on the front of the album are from the Fancy Pants Tabbed Book Clear Cuts Set.
• Turquoise Pearl Ex by Jacquard Products
• Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Weathered Wood
• Ice Blue Fluid Chalk Cat Eye Ink Pad
• Silver Trim
• Blue Lace Patterned Paper From the Little Yellow Bicycle Delightful Collection
• Metallic Gel Pen
• Black Sharpie Marker
• Mod Podge or Other Adhesive. Update: I used mod podge on this project. But, I recently discovered Zip Dry Paper Glue, thanks to the ladies at Clear Scraps. I have now switched to using Zip Dry for all my clear albums. It's really great! Try it! Mod Podge will always have a place in my craft supplies, but Zip Dry is definitely superior to Mod Podge for use with clear albums. It's also great for gluing paper, because Zip Dry won't curl the paper like Mod Podge and other liquid adhesives do.
• Plus you will also need some winter-themed photos. My photos for this project are from a ski trip.

Instructions For How To Make This Winter-themed Mini Scrapbook Album:

First, choose the photos you are going to use for your mini album. Edit and print the photos if necessary.

Next, gather the supplies you are going to use. Or more accurately, the supplies you think you are going to use, in one spot.

Next, prepare journaling for each photo if you want your mini album to have journaling. For this particular mini book, I am going to skip this step. The photos I am using are from one of my husband's ski trips; I didn't go on the trip and I can pretty well guarantee you that my husband isn't going to do any journaling, so forget journaling on this one. But just because I skip the journaling doesn't mean you have to skip it if you decide to make one of these little albums!

Next, decide on the order that your photos and journaling will be displayed in the book. Figure out how many pages you will need, and whether or not you have enough pages. If your mini book doesn't already come with enough pages, you can make more pages for it. Click here to see my article about how to make more pages for your clear album using transparencies and overlays. I made 3 extra pages for this mini book using the ultra-simple techniques I share in that article.

At this stage, I started experimenting with different effects I could get by layering papers overtop of one another. Here I have the Blue Lace patterned paper from Deja Views Little Yellow Bicycle Delightful Collection layered underneath of Twirl Frosty Lace Cardstock by KI Memories.

And here is a Hambly Snowflakes Overlay layered overtop of the same Blue Lace paper. That combination gives a slightly different effect.

Next we have the Hambly Snowflakes overlay and the Twirl Lace Cardstock layered overtop of Kraft cardstock.

I've decided that I like all these ideas, so I will be using them throughout the mini-album. Next I am going to cut some of the papers down to the same size and shape as my album. I start with the Little Yellow Bicycle Blue Lace patterned paper. First I trace around it with a metallic gel pen so that I can see where I want to cut.

Then I cut it out.

Next I inked around the edges with Ice Blue Fluid Chalk ColorBox ink by Clearsnap. It's helpful to use a smaller cat-eye ink pad (rather than using a larger inkpad) when you ink around detailed shapes like this.

I have handy the pages that I made from the Hambly Snowflakes Overlay/Transparency:

Here's how the page made from Blue Lace paper looks with one of the pages from the Hambly Snowflakes Overlay / Transparency laid on top. I like this effect! I am going to set it aside to be embellished later, while I work on more of the basic foundation pages for the clear album.

The next step is to do the same thing for the Twirl Frosty Lace Cardstock. This paper is a bit trickier to trace around and cut out because it is die cut, but it is worth the effort because the end result looks really interesting. After I was finished cutting it out, I attached it to one of the snowflake-shaped album pages. I did this using Mod Podge as my adhesive, and I used a sponge brush to brush the Mod Podge onto the die cut paper. (If you do this too, make sure you have a roll of paper towels handy.) There are plenty of other adhesives that would work well for this if you'd rather use a different adhesive instead.

If you make this project too, you will want to flip the page over and take a look at the back (after the adhesive is dry.) See how I have uneven little bits and pieces hanging over the edges of the page? Those need to be cleaned up. Use either an X-acto knife,, craft knife or tiny scissors to cut off the excess paper before proceeding. Be careful that you do not cut the actual sheer album page though.

At this point, I thought the edges of the snowflake looked "unfinished" and I wanted to give them some emphasis. I roughly traced around the edges with a black Sharpie marker.

Then I inked around the edges of the snowflake page using Tim Holtz's "Weathered Wood" Distress Ink. I used rough, uneven strokes with the ink pad to achieve a distressed effect.

Next I used the Ice Blue Fluid Chalk again to ink the edges even more, filling in some of the more uneven places from the previous layer of Distress Ink.

To be continued!