I'm finally finished with my first mini-book.....which by the way, isn't so "mini". I wanted to capture and record the events during my favorite month of the year, using a pack of index cards I found at the local office supply store. It was perfect--the orange tabbed cards went to #31-perfect for October. I used pictures for what we did each day for each index numbered card.
I didn't keep the whole book "uniform"...I kind of did what I felt was right on each page for the events in that section. I made a lot of my own journaling spots-and I really liked how they were in size for a mini book. So here are only a few pages from my first (gigantic) "mini" book.
This is the "intro" page. Each small green circle on the bottom is one of our family's intials. I used my own handwriting for the journaling, some letter rub-on's for accent/embellishments, and printed some inspirational October poems and quotes from the computer.

I used a lot of circular accents, and I felt like they were kind of "floating". In and around most of my circle "stuff", I just took a marker, and did my own doodling to "ground" the circular accent. In the picture below, I showed how I used my circle punch in some extra space in a picture where I couldn't exactly crop out. Wrote a word that described the picture, then doodled on the paper beneath inside the circle. Simple, fast, and easy.
I also enjoyed using my McGill file tab punch for easy and fast accents as well, and found some stickers that actually fit right onto the tab.

For Jack and Collin's halloween costume pages, I used a file tab punch from kraft paper (which I'm loving by the way) and wrote their costume description on top, and used rub-ons with their initals on the bottom corner of the tab. Again... simple and easy.
I also used this orange envelope with a transparent window, and embellished with a circle punch and rub-on's.
The trick-or-treat pages...

And the last pages....

Since this book turned out WAY thicker that I wanted or even imagined, I used twine. I wrapped together sections of each 10 pages, then connected each section together. And I think the twine turned out pretty cute...adding to the autumn theme (reminds me of scarecrows, hay, etc.)

And I stamped only this on the back cover:
Never thought I'd get into scrapbooking 7 years ago....never thought I'd get into mini-books even a few months ago. And now I'm hooked on both! Peace.