Today is my first day hosting a prompt for Bookending Winter, which is hosted by the lovely Clo over at Book Dragons. Please take a moment and stop by to say hi to her!
The prompt I chose for today is one all of you crafters will hopefully love. I adore making things for people, so today I am going to tell you about three projects I have made for people in the past!
Before we start, I just wanted to say that I bought all of my supplies at my local Dollar Tree, with the exception of my paper trimmer, which I got at Michaels. (I do a fair bit of paper crafting, so it was important to me to have a good trimmer.)
Also, if you are opposed to the re-purposing of books, tearing their guts out and putting them to new uses, then you might want to look away – lest this post upset you. My choice for these projects is a used copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which cost me a whopping $2.50 from the thrift store.
Project 1: A Bookmark
I don’t know about you guys, but I am forever losing bookmarks and I love making new ones. This is awesome because you can use your friend’s favourite book to make something meaningful, or you can highlight funny passages. Honestly, the possibilities are as limited as your imagination!
Cost: $
Difficulty: very easy
What you need:
- A piece of cardstock.
- A few pages of your chosen book.
- A tape runner
Why a tape runner and not glue?
A tape runner is better than glue in this particular case because it won’t make the paper wrinkle or curl.
Directions:
- Cut your cardstock to your preferred size.
- Tear your book pages into strips and pieces. I chose to trim the white space at the edge as well, just because of personal preference.
- Using your tape runner, tape one side of the pieces of your pages and place them on the cardstock. They do NOT have to be even, and they will overlap in fun ways.
- Once you are happy with how it looks, you are done! Cover the whole thing, or leave space. The choice is yours!
Bonus: Fancy it up by putting some of that washi tape we all buy and horde for our someday projects on it. You know who you are, don’t @ me.
Project 2: Bookish Magnets
So I know we have probably all seen these and wondered how they are made. Good news, they are SUPER easy! These can definitely be customized, though the beads are not very big so they usually feature one or two words.
Cost: $$
Difficulty: easy, but time consuming
What you’ll need:
- Pages from your book that you want to highlight.
- Glass decor beads
- Magnets the same size as the beads
- A clear-drying glue (Alene’s clear gel tacky glue worked really well here!)
- A pencil
- Scissors (not pictured)
- Hot glue gun (not pictured)
Directions:
- Find the passage or words you want to highlight in magnet form.
- Place the glass bead over top and trace around it with your pencil.
- Cut out the traced wonky circle.
- Put a small dab of glue on the flat side of the glass bead.
- Spread the glue out into a thin layer. Your finger will work fine for this.
- Stick your wonky circle onto the glass bead, with the words you wanted to highlight facing the round side.
- Let it dry for about 20 minutes.
- Hot glue the magnet to the flat side of the glass bead. NB: If your magnet doesn’t have a paper backer on it, be sure to test it on your fridge so you have the proper side facing out. Otherwise, your magnet won’t stick to anything metal.
- Let dry for 24 hours before wrapping up. Voila!
Ahem. I seem to have forgotten to take a photo of the finished product. Sorry!
Project 3: An envelope for a gift card
Sometimes you want to give your friend a gift card, but you still want to personalize it. So here is a really easy way to make a little envelope from a book page!
Cost: $
Difficulty: very easy
What you need:
- A book page
- A tape runner
Directions:
- Trim your book page so it is about an inch wider than the gift card.
- Fold the page in half for about the top inch and a half only.
- Using that fold as the center, fold the corners in. Stick them in place using the tape runner.
- Fold the bottom of the page up to just below the envelope flap.
- Tape at the edges of the page to hold in place. To be fancy, instead of the tape runner you can use more of that washi tape from the first project.
- Voila, you now have a gift card holder! Since writing on the book page might not be very effective, you can always stick a gift label on it.
Have you ever made something bookish to give as a gift? Comment below and tell me all about it!
Don’t forget when you are talking about Bookending Winter on social media to tag your posts with #bkendingwin2018
Stay bookish, lovelies!
I always paint my bookmarks and use laminator so they won’t go bad after a time using them. I couldn’t cut a page from a book though.
Wow, those are great ideas! 🙂
I’m going to have to try that bookmark idea! These are awesome