Franny's Handmade Mini Books

During the last week of school, Franny gets to host a little craft table for something they call "Scholar Dollar Day."  This is where the students get to spend the "bucks" they've earned all year (for good behavior and homework) on stuff their fellow students sell.  Some kids sell cookies or snacks or other yummies.  Last fall, Franny sold a bunch of little Bind-it-All books we had in the scrap room - random samples and such, and she made a killing.  This time, she wanted to create a bunch of her own - and this is how we did it!

For projects like this, scrap cardboard -in this case, shipping boxes - works great.

We started by using scrap cardboard (shipping boxes) that we trimmed on the Zutter Kutter.  You can made a bunch of 3X4" pieces from one package - it's amazing how many!  Then we trimmed white paper for the inside pages of each book - one sheet of 12X12 makes 12 3X4" pages.  We also trimmed scraps of patterned paper for the covers.  The Dreamkuts is indeed the dream machine for this task!

3X4 is the perfect quick size for kid projects.

In addition to the cardboard, we used random pieces of acrylic and plastic that we found in the scrap room.  It really is something to go digging around for materials and finding things that can be quickly turned into covers.  Franny got a little assembly line going - gluing the papers to the covers, me helping her punch; she is a real binding pro - has to be to be the daughter of a Zutter Zister!  Once we got all the little books bound, she lined them up and set to adding her favorite embellishments.  Usually, flowers were the top pick, but I also had so many leftover sticker sheets, that she made good use of all sorts of stickers and such.  I love projects like this that uses up the leftover materials!!

Punch, place pages and covers in order, thread the owire, and bind.  Voila!

The embellishment assembly line.

She ended up making out quite well at this year's sale again.  Her friend sold flower decorated pens, so between the two of them, they had a nice marketing plan - notebooks and pens!  She's excited about all the "Scholar Dollars" she earned.  Too bad she can't spend those dollars anywhere but at school!  LOL!

Ready for the sale!