Puppy Brag Book
Level: Easy to Medium
Who doesn't need a brag book of some kind to show off their puppy?? I made this one starting with a kit I found at the local Pet Boutique but have since found at places like MyPetGifts, AlphaDogToys, ScrappingFromTheHeart and on eBay ranging in price from $6 to $28. The kit had a beautiful 20-page album with embossed paw prints across the cover and a furry tail bookmark. It also included 8 patterned background papers and 3 sticker sheets. The basics of this album will work with any kind of scrapbook kit you find like that.
Materials:
Puppy (or dog) Album kit
Various photos of puppy — pages on this album were 7x5, so all photos were smaller
Various papers — both printed and solid
Various stickers — words, letters, numbers, items
Photo adhesive
Various journaling pens and/or letter and number stickers
Various embellishments — brads, flowers, ribbon
Scissors and/or paper trimmer
Corner rounder
Shape Cutters (oval, circle, etc)
Step 1:
Organize your photos in the order you want to show them off. My album was done in chronological order. I picked out the ones that showed the best views, and/or certain pictures that were just the best. Use scissors and/or shape cutter to crop the photos. If you have cut straight edges, you may want to use the corner rounder to round all the corners. I did round some of the edges on mine, but not all.
Step 2:
I always want to add a title page (or scrapbook equivalent) to my books, so for this one I used the inside front cover. I made a tag and put my puppy's name and the year for the album, and then added a matted photo. This just needs to be something that someone will see when first opening the book and know exactly what you're including in the album.
Step 3:
Using the different papers you have available, pick which backgrounds you want to go with each group of photos. This is also the time to decide if you want to have the photos matted and if so, which papers to use for that. I tried to do each 2-page spread completely different from the others, but you may choose to do a similar layout, or color theme, through the whole album.
Step 4:
Go through and mount the background papers and then the photos (whether matted or not) to the pages using photo adhesive.
Step 5:
After the photos have been mounted, go through and journal on the pages using your various pens and/or stickers. I used both pens and word stickers for my journaling.
Step 6:
Using your various stickers and other embellishments, go through the album and jazz it up to highlight looks. I added some cute brads, fabric flowers, and ribbon trim to some of the different pages.
