Frugal Tuesday - Making Bookmarks for Fun.

The snow is coming down hard this morning. After not getting hardly any snow all winter it is kind of nice but by the end of the day we may be snowed in, if we aren't all ready as it snowed all night. I'm still trying to keep busy and not go stir-crazy this winter. It seems that the closer we get to warmer weather the harder it is. I have so many projects on the go now that I am hoping they will keep me going for a good long time... or at least until the warm weather hits.

One of the things I've been working on is photo bookmarks. I ended up with a new printer the other day and it seems to print fairly decent photo's so I thought why not make some gifts for a few relatives and friends. Of course I made quite a few different ones but then decided I would make one I could show all of you which wouldn't have pictures of my relatives on them. Who wants to look at pictures of strangers?

Here's what I did:

The first thing to do of course is decide what pictures to put on the book mark. I used ones off my blog to make it interesting and then just used a word document to line them up and make them the size I wanted. Of course you can use any type of program you like and there are quite a few free ones on the internet like this one that looks interesting. http://www.squidoo.com/photostrip Kinda like those old time photo's you would get in one of the photo booths. Do they still have them? Hmm...

Deciding on photo's is the hardest part and took me the longest. As you look at the photos you will notice I ended up changing the back of the bookmark half way through. Oh well...  The rest is easier!

Gather everything together:

I wish I had a paper cutter and a laminator but since I don't and my budget will not be allowing either anytime soon I improvised. Hmm... Kinda like I do with all my recipes! I guess it carries over into every part of life when you live this way. You will need a printer to print pictures, hole punch, scissor, ruler, sharp utility knife (that's what I left out of the picture! I knew there was something missing.), pencil, beads and some ribbon.

Decide on the size you want the bookmarks and mark the paper carefully. I just marked the corners. Then using a utility knife and a ruler as a guide carefully cut the papers to size. Be very careful with this! It would be better to use a paper cutter if you have one.

Then cut the clear tack paper to size. You will want it bigger than the book mark by about an inch. This will give you some room for error. Then lay the back and front of the bookmark together. I ended up using just a very tiny bit of glue (one speck on each end) to hold them together as I found they just slid all over the place if I didn't. Don't use much though or it will mess up the picture. Then removing the cover paper lay the first piece of tack paper down, place the pictures on top and the second piece of tack paper on top. Making sure you put the sticky sides together. Rub firmly to get it to stick together well. Trim carefully with ruler and utility knife as it will no doubt not line up perfectly. You need to leave about a 1/4 inch or so all the way around so the tack paper has itself to stick too. It's hard to see it in the picture because it is clear.

Carefully punch a hole in the top center using whatever paper hole punch you have.

Next is the beading for the ribbon. I had a bit of trouble with this as the ribbon did not want to go through the tiny little beads. To fix this problem I just cut the ribbon on an angle so one end was really small and then ran it through some hot wax. This stiffened it up and worked great. I really wanted to use the white ribbon but it was just too wide, there was no way the beads were going to fit on it.

Once I had all the beads I would need on the ribbon I pulled enough beads for each one back to the end and snipped it off at about 8 inches. Then I just knotted the ends.

Ribbon all ready to go!

Fold the ribbons in half then push through the hole. Then pull the beaded ends through and you are done!

Done! That was fun! What are you doing for fun today?