Step by step mini photo album in a box as promised

Had a lovely scrapbook demo at squires in badshot lea yesterday, nice and busy as they had a quilting exhibition there too. for the lovely ladies who admired the mini album i made for my friend Marilyn , here it is finished with instructions.

i started with a 6 x 6 stepper card, i opened it out horizontally and then scored it to make 6 equal parts, i then folded it in half and cut it down in the guillotine to 3" high. so you then have 2 mini books to decorate .

I used the above pack of lucy cromwell A4 ultimate die-cut pack to decorate my book as it was most suitable.
I painted my box, ( nesting boxes from Do-crafts) with pearlised acrylic paint, several coats

i printed off my photos in picassa, 12 to a page.

The way i chose to decorate my album depended on the photo's and the colours , in this one you would not use any red embellishments or it would bring the fire extinguisher to your notice . i am going to find the best colours by laying photo on to them , see below

i prefer the lower paper buy just to be sure i am trying it with a toning mat as well, see below

 Yup, they are both nice but i think the pink one brings the presents to the viewers attention more.
i shall ink up the edges in a dark purple before sticking into my album,

i then chose a die cut frame to pop over the image.

as you can see, i have now added some 'presents 'embellishments from the pack to cover the fire extinguisher and the radiator in the photo. the green button is added to draw the eye to the green plants in the background too. i continued in this way for the photo below , using a 'cup cake ' embellishment to cover the half a person in the background.

Try different techniques like embossing as shown above.

 on the photo above, i cut some bunting from a page in the lucy cromwell pack

i continued in this way for the rest of the book and these are some of the other pages.

i made a front and back cover for my book, and you could just tie it with ribbon if you didn't want to put it into a box. Or you could stick the last page of the book into the bottom of the box, so it just pulls out to view. i thought my box was a little deep for that.

i covered the front of my box with pretty paper , punched in the corners and inked.

adding a small pink stone to each embossed flower

I finally stuck a ribbon all around the lid of the box and tied it on one corner.

I hope she likes it, and i hope you like it too and will have a go yourself :-)