I had just a few free minutes on Tuesday and quickly stitched up some of these blank books to take on our car trip to Seattle for Thanksgiving. Clara loves to write, color and create in little books. It struck me what a great, free, fast gift little blank books would be. They look great even using pages torn from a magazine for covers. Old atlases are perfect, too--they're printed on both sides, have no ads, and often are a perfect paper weight for soft covers. You can get them close to free at thrift stores or
library stores for their withdrawn books. You can involve your child by having him or her paint papers for the covers--
paste grain paper,
bubble prints,
salted watercolors, or just painted scraps all look great. The books in the photo took minutes from the time I cut the paper (magazine and atlas scraps and construction paper for the text block) to completion. Here's how they are sewn on the machine (you may need to click on the photo to see it in detail):
If you don't have a machine,
pamphlet stitch is easy and doesn't take much longer. My first grade students used to sew their own pamphlet stitch books using a pushpin to poke the holes and embroidery floss and a blunt needle to sew the pages to their covers. I'm thinking that it would actually be a great idea to have a few stacks of these around tied with twine or ribbon to give to unexpected visitors or for last-minute gifts. I noticed some colored pencil sets (and sketch pencil sets) in tin boxes for $5 at Michael's recently in their dollar bins; a set of books along with pencils, crayons or stickers would be such a great gift. Or you could get really fancy and use a placemat to make one
of these activity kits and fill it using blank books and other fun stuff:
Truthfully, I wouldn't mind one myself. Ha.
I had just a few free minutes on Tuesday and quickly stitched up some of these blank books to take on our car trip to Seattle for Thanksgiving. Clara loves to write, color and create in little books. It struck me what a great, free, fast gift little blank books would be. They look great even using pages torn from a magazine for covers. Old atlases are perfect, too--they're printed on both sides, have no ads, and often are a perfect paper weight for soft covers. You can get them close to free at thrift stores or library stores for their withdrawn books. You can involve your child by having him or her paint papers for the covers--paste grain paper, bubble prints, salted watercolors, or just painted scraps all look great. The books in the photo took minutes from the time I cut the paper (magazine and atlas scraps and construction paper for the text block) to completion. Here's how they are sewn on the machine (you may need to click on the photo to see it in detail):
If you don't have a machine, pamphlet stitch is easy and doesn't take much longer. My first grade students used to sew their own pamphlet stitch books using a pushpin to poke the holes and embroidery floss and a blunt needle to sew the pages to their covers. I'm thinking that it would actually be a great idea to have a few stacks of these around tied with twine or ribbon to give to unexpected visitors or for last-minute gifts. I noticed some colored pencil sets (and sketch pencil sets) in tin boxes for $5 at Michael's recently in their dollar bins; a set of books along with pencils, crayons or stickers would be such a great gift. Or you could get really fancy and use a placemat to make one of these activity kits and fill it using blank books and other fun stuff:
Truthfully, I wouldn't mind one myself. Ha.
1 comment:
Thanks for these simple but wonderful ideas!
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