July Hybrid Challenge: 4×6 Brag Book
Hi there, Crissa here (aka Geekette). I’m here to introduce the new blog challenge we’ll be having here at Digital Freebies. We will be holding a hybrid challenge here on the blog once a month. You get the whole month to work on it even! How wonderful is that!? So be sure to check back here every month for the new one.
To kick it off we’re going to do a simple 4×6 brag book, like the one below.
This is the one that I created. The pages were done with the Shabbiliciously Posh Baby Girl Brag Book Album, created by Danielle Engebretson. I popped in my pictures, added some text and then sent them off to Costco.com to be printed.
First you’ll want to decide on a brag book album set, you can find a whole slew of them by clicking here. Or feel free to use one you already have or from anywhere you’d like. If you’re feeling very ambitious you can go ahead and create your own pages. But you don’t have to. Put together your pages and either print them at home, or have them printed.
You’ll then want to gather your supplies. I chose to find some chipboard to attach my pages to. JoAnn’s carries 4.5×6.5 chipboard mat, in black/white and brights. Or you can use heavy cardstock or some other form of mat. I also gathered some different types of embellishments like ribbon, brads, rhinestones, eyelets and some paper flowers. You can also print out/have printed, some of the different embellishments for the kit you’ve chosen if you have the whole kit. I printed out a few of the little bears that comes with the Shabbiliciously Posh Baby Girl Page Kit. You’ll also need some form of adhesive, I used Craft Bond rubber cement. You could use Mod Podge or the little adhesive dots which ever you prefer.
If you want you can go ahead and start embellishing some of the pages before gluing them to your mat/cardstock/chipboard. I used some brads to attach a few of the flowers, so I just poked a whole through the page where I wanted the flower. I even stapled a bit of ribbon to one page. After you’ve attached your pages to your backing then you can really start embellishing with whatever you’ve chosen to embellish with.
After you’re done embellishing your pages, you’ll now want to decide how you want to bind them. I chose to punch two holes in each page, and used three pieces of different colored ribbon to lace through the pages and hold the book together. If you’ve decided to use card stock, you may be able to get away with using a couple brads to hold the pages together, or even an eyelet, as its not as thick as chipboard.
*Tip: when using several strands of ribbon you can wrap a bit of tape around the end (shown below) to help pull all the strands through at once instead of each one separately. This works well with fiber, yarn or string.*
You can then tie the ends into bows, or just simply knot them like I’ve done. *Remember to leave slack in the ribbons/yarn/fibers/string so that you can open the pages flat while looking through it.*
And voila you’re done! You have a wonderful little brag book to share with family and friends.
My finished project:
I chose to add a closure on the side prior to putting the pages onto the chipboard, so that I’d be able to keep the album closed and tidy. You can do this with ribbon by gluing the ribbon to the chipboard (be sure to leave a long enough tail to tie) then applying the cover and back pages over the ribbon, shown below.
I hope you found this tutorial useful, and helpful. I look forward to seeing what you come up with. Post a picture of your brag book in the Hybrid Gallery and a link here in the comments on the blog to be entered to win a $5 gift card to the Digital Freebies Boutique.
Remember to have fun!! If you have any questions you can ask them here and I’ll get back to you just as soon as possible.
