Leave Your Mark

This is a super easy, really fun way to make stylish bookmarks for gifts or for your own book collection. I made a few of these for a bookmark swap for my book club group (Hey Girls!!). We each made or bought a book mark and randomly picked them out of a bag; a great way to start your first book club meeting!

Materials needed:

• a few sheets of printed scrapbook paper
• solid color card stock paper (card stock will help make your bookmark sturdier)
• scissors
• decorative scissors
• an assortment of ribbon
• clear contact paper
• a hole punch
• a glue stick
• a ruler
• a pencil

Start by using a ruler to measure the size bookmark that you want and cut it out with decorative scissors. (I have a pretty good eye, so I just cut my scrapbook paper with decorative scissors without tracing first. But use a pencil on the backside of the paper if you want to make sure it's perfect!)  Once you have your scrapbook paper cut-out, match it up with a piece of card stock paper for the background of your bookmark. Leave a small border around your cut-out and cut the solid paper with regular scissors.

     

 

Line up the contact paper and cut a strip twice as long as your bookmark. Cut the contact paper strip in half.

Before you cover your bookmark with contact paper, punch a hole 1/2" from the top. Also, I stamped the back of my bookmark with a personalized stamp. If you are giving your bookmark away, this is a sweet way to personalize it for a friend.

Peel the backing off of the contact paper and place your bookmark on one piece. Carefully match up the other piece of contact paper to the bottom of the first piece and slowly press them together, rubbing out any air bubbles.

Trim off the excess contact paper and tie your ribbon through the hole. (Fold the ribbon end to end, feed it through the hole, gather the ribbon ends and pull them through the ribbon hole.)

TA-DA! Perfect! ♥