Mini Books

By rowarrior

Mini books, or mini albums are growing in popularity in leaps and bounds – they make great gift albums, and as they are not full size, take far less time than a full sized album would do. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and there is nothing that can't be converted to either contain a mini album, or to use as a cover for one!

Matchbooks

Inspired by the free match books that you find in your average hotel or bar, these books, when made from actual match books (matches removed first of course!) are truly ‘mini'. The easiest way to display things in them is to make an accordion of paper to fit inside it eg:

In the above example, you would have 5 surfaces facing you as you opened the paper accordion up, and 4 surfaces on the reverse (as the 5 th surface would be stuck to the bottom of the matchbook).

Using the same basic shape, you can scale up to create bigger matchbooks, and can have other display methods for the pages eg:

DIY index cards of varying length (getting larger towards rear) tucked into the bottom flap of matchbook

Fold out flaps:

Pre-made books

There are a number of companies that make mini books ready for you to just add paper and embellishments. 7-Gypsies do spiral bound books from 4”x4” to trifold 5”x7” to 7 ½” x 10” house shaped ones. Bazzill do accordion albums in their own envelopes, as well as coin holder albums (think of all the things other than coins that could go in those circles…) all in Bazzill paper colours, so these should be easy to mix and match paper with. They also have 8”x8”, 6”x6” and 5”x7” ones with normal openings, and some gatefold 8”x10 ½“. Basic Grey also have a range of mini books to go with their papers, including a tag book and 6”x6” gatefold book.

Tag books:

As a name, ‘tag book' encompasses a wide range of options, but as long as there's something tag related in it, it could fall into this category! Examples include:

For the first example, there are 2 ways of creating and binding the book. Either create your outside cover of a tag folded in half, with ‘tag ends' at each end, then create inner pages that will all tuck inside each other, and either sew it together or loop ribbon or floss round the spine and tie it tightly. Or you could create pages which are folded in half and then placed side by side and sewn together by going through the folds like this:

                 First pass  Second pass (backwards)

This second option will allow you to open the whole book out and tie the covers together back to back, whereas the first will restrict you to just opening it as in a conventional book.

For the second example you are effectively creating pockets for the tags to go into. This can be done using one piece of paper folded to give different shaped pockets, such as:

Fold in half end to end, then fold the 2 halves in half back on themselves, concertina style

Finally, for a bit of variation:

Fold triangle to inside of created pocket, then either stitch or glue at fold to hold pockets together

The last tag book example is as follows:

By creating a concertinaed spine, tags can be stuck on such that in the top half of the book the tags face one way, and the bottom half has the tags facing the other way.

Accordion Albums

A simple form of mini book to make is the accordion album. This is done by folding your background paper or cardstock in a concertina style, with each fold being the opposite direction of the last:

To get long albums, you can either create a slight overlap at one fold and glue 2 accordions together, or you can get hold of cardstock for artists, which is acid free, and buy a large sheet (I know I can get pieces as large as 23 3/8 ” x 33 1/8 ”) which should give you plenty of scope for large numbers of pages!

To keep one of these albums together you can create an envelope for it, or maybe add a ribbon tie to hold it shut.

Other mini albums ideas:

Altoid tins, tackle boxes and mini lunch boxes make perfect containers for mini albums – cut your cardstock in such a way as to create an accordion album to fit inside them. Library pockets can also be used to hold albums made of, for example, tags or index cards.

Coasters, CDs and mini file folders can make great covers for albums, even try using old CD cases to hold your albums either flashcard style, or accordion style.

The possibilities are endless, let your imagination run wild!

CD:

Checkbook brag book:

Bought mini book :

Playing cards: