Mini Hybrid Album

I recently had the pleasure of helping to throw a surprise birthday party for my mother.  I was so excited to see her on that day and knew that she would have a great time with the family and friends that were able to attend.  And she was certainly surprised, which made it all that much better.  I wanted to provide her with some pictures from that evening but thought I'd dress them up a bit in a small mini album.  This was just a quick project and I think she'll be pleased to have something fun to look through and remember the event by.

I began by creating a fun shape in Photoshop which I completed by merging some general shapes into one fun swirly rectangle.  Once I liked what I saw, I laid out two on a 8.5x11 inch page.  Rotating one of the images so that it was the mirror (back side) to the other.  Then I clipped digital papers to my shape.  I choose to use papers from my kit "Inspire".  I printed these out at home onto Epson Premium Presentation Paper.  If you do not have a home printer, you can always save your files to PDFs and take them to your local office store for printing.
After cutting them out, I assembled them in the order I preferred, selected my pictures, and then placed some of the "Inspire" elements onto another sheet and printed it to use them as embellishments within the album.  I pasted the cover pages onto a cracker box and cut them out.  I then proceeded to paste together each front and back page. 
I allowed just over a 1/4 inch from the edge of the album to be used for binding and scored each page at that point (allowing for some bend) before punching holes and putting some ribbon through to hold it all together.
After my pages were complete, I used Jim Holtz distress ink around the edges.  This helped to hide any areas where the pages didn't line up correctly and provided for a nice, finished look.  And, ta da!  It was all complete in just about 2-3 hours time.  And it makes a great way to share the pictures with my mother. 
It's just one more way to get creative with your digital stash!