Making It! - World's Simplest Book Mark Edition

Cutesy nesting bookmarks.

So, I'm in this bookclub and every Christmas, we have a white elephant exchange where we all bring the most horrific thing we own and pawn it off on someone else. We also tend to gift each other with little knick-knacks of the free to cheap variety. For the last few years, I've made a habit of making my gifties and I've done everything from fudge to scrap yarn scarves.

This year, I saw these super-cute little bookmarks on Pinterest and knew that I had to make them. A little digging in my basement and I came up with some cute scrapbook paper.

Basic Shape = Fish or Fat Arrow

I tried scrapbooking and I actually did it for a couple of years. In the end, I just wasn't as into it as the amount of money I was spending would imply. So, I gave it up. I have found, though, that a lot of the stuff I accumulated through my scrappy life has come in handy. I use those tape rollers all the time and I will never, ever give up my corner rounder.

In any case, it took me a little experimenting but I came up with the basic shape needed and made a template. Then, I traced it onto the "good" paper and cut it out. It looks a little like a fish. Or a fat arrow.

Fold one - corner up.

Next, I folded the point up, so that the apex was aligned with the the lowest point in the "arrow" end.

Then, I folded the right hand point down and ran a couple of lines of tape over the top. If you don't have scrappy materials, you could use double sided tape, glue dots or glue. You want to make sure you get the corners (like I didn't do in the pic - hey - there's a small learning curve here).

Fold Two

Finally, fold down the last corner and press to secure against the tape or glue. You're done! Both sides are two pages thick. I considered covering each one with clear contact paper to make it a little more heavy-duty, but after playing with them a while, I decided this would hold up at least as well as you're typical cardstock and thread bookmark.

I want to go back and write little quotes on them, but I haven't collected any yet. Any suggestions are welcome!

A couple of notes about paper - you could use any paper you want, but I think the scrapbook paper is just about perfect for this job. If you used anything much heavier you would want to crease the edges very carefully, using a blunt blade, like the straight side of a butter knife. Anything lighter and you'd want to reinforce it a little. This would be pretty cute with maps or wrapping paper, too. The best part is that in the end you have something cute and easy to make that didn't cost you much, if anything. So, go ahead and use it and even lose it. It's okay.

 So, what do you think - do you like my easy-peasy little bookmarks? Have a super-easy gifty you'd like to share?