The Handmade Christmas: bookmarks

When this week's project started my intention was to make only one bookmark.

My son is in second grade and just starting to read chapter books. He's been using one of my old bookmarks (after all, I always have tons of them around) but I promised that I would make a new one just for him. Since I'm sure he'll be getting new books for Christmas, I decided to add the bookmark to his Christmas list.

Well, I made his bookmark, and then I sort of got carried away and ended up making three more, all different. 

They can be made with felt scraps, some pieces of ribbon and embroidery floss and a bit of fabric glue. And the best thing? They come together so quickly that, like me, you will not stop at just one.

This was the reason it all started:

I've had the cars & trucks ribbon in my ribbon box for a while and decided it was perfect for a bookmark for my son. I embroidered the road onto the felt, sewed everything together and then glued on the red cars.

After that, I made the pink felt + butterfly one and this time I actually remembered to take a picture of the materials used prior to assembly: two rectangles of felt, embroidery floss, ribbon and whatever you choose for embellishment (in my case, a butterfly similar to the one I used for the sticky notes holder I posted about last week)

I made it the same way as the first one but used a blanket stitch instead.

And then I decided to try something else and use a larger portion of ribbon and smaller felt scraps, and came up with these instead:

They are basically a folded ribbon with the ends tucked in between the pieces of felt at the bottom. In the hearts one, the two twin felt hearts were sewn, but the circles bookmark is 100% no sew, so I just glued the circles to each other with the ribbon in the middle.

These ribbon bookmarks have the advantage that you can fit the book page you want to mark in between the folded ribbon and be sure your bookmark stays in place. This is particularly useful for me because I keep a book in my purse to read in the train to and from work everyday and I hate when the bookmarks fall off. So one of these will for sure be mine.

The other two still have to future owner in sight, but I'm sure I'll think of someone from here until Christmas.

Enjoy,