fresh from the Makery: bookmarks

This week: bookmarks. Lots of bookmarks. More bookmarks than any one person probably needs, unless, of course, you read twelve books at a time.


Apparently, in addition to my compulsion to give stuff away, I seem incapable of making just one of anything.

I approached this week with two goals in mind. First, make a bookmark for Neal, who seems to simply remember where he left off every night (I've never seen him use a bookmark, nor does he dog-ear the page...mysterious). Second, use up a spool of ribbon and a stash of snaps.


I remember recently going through some random craft supplies, coming across these sew-your-own Barbie outfit kits I've had since elementary school. For some reason, I got rid of the fabric but kept the related elastic, snaps, and thread. Bizarre, right? I liked the idea of sewing snaps onto something, but the closest thing I have to fabric is this spool of ribbon.


Playing around with the ribbon made me think of ribbon candy and I thought it would be funny to use the snaps to make the ends of a bookmark made from a piece of ribbon look like ribbon candy (like how Hairspray was a film that inspired a Broadway musical that inspired a film)


And, as a bonus, you can not only extend the length of the bookmark by unclasping the snaps, but you can also attach it to a second, similar bookmark, a little like Smittens.


Here's the bookmark in action:




As tedious as sewing snaps onto ribbon in order to make a ribbon candy-like bookmark is, somehow making a couple of these didn't feel like enough for a week's worth of work here at the Makery. So I carried the ribbon theme over to some more conventional bookmark creations. The first set involved leftover pieces of green scrapbooking paper, translucent and magenta vellum, paper punches, and buttons.


For the second set, I printed images of animal patterns on a few sheets of the inkjet velour paper (seemed like a natural pairing) that I used to line the packaging for last week's project, and paired these with the brown satin ribbon also used last week.


There are five in each set, plus the two ribbon candy bookmarks, so I'm not sure how to deal with the giveaway part this week. I guess if you like what you see, you can leave me a comment with your preference (and, hey, if you want all twelve, that works for me!). And, honestly, I'm not too worried about the logistics of the giveaway. After all, the two lovely readers who left comments last week, it turns out, were more interested in the leftover beads than the magnets themselves. Which was fine by me, especially since I was just going to throw those away. I've decided to try and sell on my Etsy shop whatever I can't give away for free here by the end of the week (do you follow that logic?).

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