Brag Book {diy}

My mom loves to have printed photos of Phee to show off.  Her request was more photos for Mother's Day.  Instead, I made brag books for the grandmas this year.  They turned out super cute!

{the finished brag book}

The time consuming part of this project is what I did with the photos.  I wanted to share Phee's artwork along with a bunch of photos of her.  So, I started by scanning 12 of her projects as jpeg files.  Then, I used those images as backgrounds and overlaid pictures of Phee.  I used Microsoft Publisher because I use that for everything.  I imagine there are any number of programs that do the same thing.  Once I had the "scrapbook" pages finished, I saved each file as a jpeg and had them printed out at as 4x6 photos at CVS. 

Now, the fun part- paper!  I love working with pretty scrapbook paper.  I dug through my stash and picked out patterned dark green card stock for the cover.  I chose coordinating papers for the pages in orange, yellow, green and blue.  Since I had 4x6 photos and wanted to have a border, plus room to punch holes in one side, I made the pages and the cover 5 x 7.5.  Once I had my papers cut out, I centered the photos and secured them with Tombow Adhesive (my favorite craft product!).

After getting the photos all glued down and the pages arranged, I created a template for punching the holes on the left side.  I cut out a 5 x 7.5 piece of light cardboard and measured 1/2 inch in from the edge for the holes, centering them on the short edge.  Hole punching all the pages- tedious.

{cover page}

I made covers for each book with some of the patterned papers I used for the pages.  I had some chipboard frames in my craft stash, too, so I was able to frame a little photo of Phee on each cover.  I added a label on each that said "Nana's Brag Book."  I created the labels in Publisher with Word Art in coordinating colors with borders that matched the chipboard frame on each cover.

I had metallic colored metal binding rings and chose yellow for both books.  Then, I dug through my ribbon odds and ends and tied a bunch of coordinating colored ribbon onto the top ring.

Once they were all assembled, I was thrilled with how they turned out.  The grandmas loved their books and have been showing them off since Sunday.  I can continue to create pages since the books are only bound with rings.  So, really, it's a gift that keeps on giving in more ways than one!

Linked up at
The Real Housewives of Rivertonmomnivore's dilemmaJust Us FourGinger Snap Crafts



Links are Amazon affiliate links.