Mini Albums - Book Review

This post is for my friends Lauren --- new to scrapbooking and excited about mini albums.  I sent her home with a paper bag book to decorate and a whole bunch of patterns.  This book came the day after she left, and I know she would have LOVED all the ideas in it.  Thought I'd post about it on here, in case my other readers were in need of mini album inspiration.

I recently purchased (from Amazon at a greatly reduced price) "Outstanding Mini Albums" by Jessica Acs (Mother's Day money)-- and must say I was very pleased with the book.  A lot of times I see books that I think would be interesting/helpful/exciting, but upon looking inside I discover they aren't all they are cracked up to be.  Well, this book isn't like that at all, in fact it was MORE than I could have hoped for.
Since mini albums are my niche I'm always looking for fun/new ways/materials to create them.  This book is divided into four sections....
1. Make Your Mark (Decorating pre-made mini albums)
2. Back to Square One (Creating Mini Albums from scratch)
3. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (Making Mini Albums out of everyday Items)
4. Think Outside the Box (crafting unique mini albums gifts)
If you're like me in that scrapbooking your life chronologically is way to overwhelming and not conducive to your short attention span, mini albums of "events" in your life are the way to go.  They are also a lot of fun to give as gifts as well.  So here's a plug for "50 ideas for creating mini scrapbooks!"
Thought I'd include a few sites on-line that have ideas/tutorials for mini albums as well.
1. Scrapbook crazy
2. Making Mini Scrapbooks
3. Mini Books 
4. Splitcoast Stampers Mini Album tutorials
5. Splitcoast Mini Album Gallery
6. Splitcoast Books, Handmade Albums, journals gallery
7. Crazy about Mini Albums (This site has some amazing albums! Thinking that mitten one might be the shape I choose to do our snow pics from this year!)
8. Gallery of Mini Albums on Flickr (lots of inspiration --- currently 3,099!)