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Girl Power Acrylic Album

A great mini for best friends, little girls, moms, and all kinds of gals!

This album can be tailored to fit any girl theme.  I chose to make it into a best friends album but you could easily change the title or make it for a little girl, mom, etc.

Don’t be intimidated to jump into acrylic!  It isn’t as scary as you think, I promise.  Here are some tips to think about when you design an acrylic album:

1.  If you design the front and back of a page to mirror each other you don’t have to worry as much about what will show from the other side.
2.  Learn to hide your adhesive and think about the placement of things *before* you lay them down permanently.
3.  Use double sided papers and embellishments that look good from both sides like most transparencies, buttons, ribbons, and flowers.

**A Note On Adhesives: I created this album so that all of the adhesive was hidden.  For 90% of it I used an ATG but any dry adhesive works great.  In some cases (like with the buttons) glue dots make more sense, and in one case (the flower transparency on the last page) I used a small amount of clear-drying liquid adhesive.**

Let’s begin with our cover:

You will want to remove the book rings from the album and have all your pages separate and in the order you want them.  I started with the page with the tab closest to the top.

- cut a 5 ¾ x 3 ¾ piece of the “Thursday” paper (orange/pink)
- cut a 5 ½ x 3 ½ piece of the “Tuesday” (green/teal lines)
- put dry adhesive on the pink side of the larger “Thursday” paper but make sure it is at least ¼ of an inch away from the edge of the paper to ensure that it doesn’t show. 
- adhere it to the BACK of the front cover like this:

(you can see where I put my adhesive)

- now center the teal lined paper on the FRONT of the cover so that the paper on the other side of the acrylic looks like a thin border around it.

The rest of the cover looks like this: 

- cut a 1 ½ - 2 inch by 3 ½ inch strip of the graph paper for under your title.  Cut it closer to 2 inches wide if you are going to border punch it like I did (or use deco scissors) and smaller if you just want a plain strip.
- carefully cut the scalloped pink border sticker to 12 scallops and overlap the right edge
- chose one of the chipboard flowers to halfway overlap the left edge (if you are not using these specific products you should make sure you have two identical chipboard pieces because we will be using one on the opposite side as well)
- add three crystals to the flower center
- choose your title in tThickers and lay it down over the graph strip
- adhere a larger embellishment (I used the ladybug chipboard) near the bottom

Inside Front Cover:

Now half the work of this page is done for us!  You will be able to see the white underside of the scalloped sticker and the kraft chipboard backing (not shown in this photo).

- cut a 5 ½ x 3 ½ piece of the “Wednesday” (teal/graph paper) paper
- adhere it to the center of the orange paper 

- cut a 1 ½ x 3 ¾ strip of the bright pink dotted paper and adhere near the bottom
- layer a sticker on top
- chose another chipboard flower and stem and position them so it exactly covers the back of the other flower
- add three crystals to the flower center
- add a chipboard butterfly near the bottom 

Next Page: the second tab down:

- cut six 1 ¾ x 1 ¾ inch squares from any of the papers
- adhere them as shown 

- cut a ¾ x 6 ¼ inch strip of the graph paper and adhere it close to the right side
- add a chipboard bee to the top right square making sure it stays within the paper border
- make a flight trail with crystals down the paper strip
- cut a small strip of the thin green alphabet sticker and add it to the bottom left square

Opposite Side:

- cut six more 1 ¾ x 1 ¾ inch squares from any of the papers
- adhere them directly on top of the squares from the other side 

- cut another ¾ x 6 ¼ inch strip of the graph paper and adhere it close to the left side, to cover where the strip on the opposite side is
- add a chipboard butterfly to the top left square making sure it stays within the paper border
- make a smaller flight trail with crystals down the paper strip
- cut a small strip of the thin green alphabet sticker and add it to the bottom right square

Next Page: the third tab down:

This is the most complicated page.  Hang in there!

- First, we are going to cut out around the edges of the red flourish and adhere it to the upper right corner.  Put adhesive ONLY at the very bottom few wispy ends.  It doesn’t matter if you can see that bit adhesive. A glue dot is a good choice here. 

- cut a 3 x 4 inch piece of the pink lined/alphabet paper
- adhere it to the page with the pink lined side up and the alphabet side showing through like the photo.  Note where I put the adhesive and that this is a view from the opposite side!!  This is very important to ensure that the adhesive does not show through on either side. 

- flip the page so the tab is on the left like in the photo above
- cut a 3 x 4 inch piece of the teal lined/green flower paper
- place adhesive on the acrylic directly over where you can see the adhesive from the paper we already added
- stagger the teal lined paper slightly lower and to the left of the other paper, making sure you cover the adhesive.  Your two pages should look like these (we are about to add the embellishments): 

- cut two equal strips of the striped border sticker and adhere them as shown
- add a chipboard embellishment in the corners as shown
- add two monograms as shown (or other small embellishments)

Last page: inside back cover/tab at the bottom:

- cut a 2 ½ x 5 ½ inch piece of the graph/teal paper
- cut the flower transparency in half
- use a tiny thin line along the cut straight edge of the transparency halves to adhere them as shown in the photo 

- very slightly overlap the transparency when you adhere the paper, graph side up
- cut a 2 ¼ x 5 ¼ inch piece of the bright pink dotted paper and adhere that in the center of the graph paper
- cut a 12 scallop border from the pink scalloped sticker and slightly overlap the right edge
- trim another sticker and adhere it to the bottom
- add a small chipboard embellishment to the top left corner
- add a crystal to the center of each scallop circle

Back Cover:

- cut a 2 ¼ x 2 ¼ inch piece from the orange paper and adhere it to the center of the teal paper
- cut a strip of the thin green alphabet sticker for the left side
- add the word “friend” (or another word) to the bottom using the Thickers
- add a small chipboard embellishment to the top right corner
- add three crystals to the top of the scalloped border 

To Finish:

I inked all of my edges with Staz-On white but it would look great with black too.  You absolutely do not need to ink the edges if you do not want to but if you do, remember that most inks will not dry on a slick surface.  Staz-On is key for this.

I then added a large button from my stash to the front of each tab, and a smaller button to the back of the tabs.

I finished it off with some coordinating ribbons tied to the book rings.

I made sure that when I added photos they were the same size (a smidge larger than 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches) and that I used the same orientation for pages where the edges would show.  For example, I made sure I used horizontal on both the front and the back of a page so you can't see any of the plain white backing. 

You could also add handwritten bits of journaling if you wanted to. 

Here are the pages completed with photos:

I used the following products to create this acrylic mini album:

      

      

        

About the author ...
Jess began playing with scrap supplies decades ago but has only seriously scrapbooked since 2004. Besides playing with paper she also enjoys baking cupcakes, entertaining at home, traveling abroad, and making French beaded flowers. She has a degree in Theatre with a concentration on Costume Design and remains active in her local theatre scene. Jess lives in Framingham, MA with her husband, Ryan, and three naughty cats.

Submitted by ScrapGoo