Artsy Me!: Bookmark

A few days back, I gifted a couple of books to a friend. These books were ordered from Flipkart. They've started providing bookmarks with every one of their books now and they're pretty interesting too. The bookmarks have a word on each side; these words are homophones, meaning they sound the same but are spelled differently. I liked how they've come up with this.. and it gave me an idea to make a bookmark myself. It'd give me something interesting to do plus it'd add a personal touch to the gifts- something I always love doing. So I removed a bookmark from one of those books, kept it for myself (:P) and began making a new one.

Materials used :
Cardboard,
White card paper,
Blue satin ribbon,
Purple card paper,
Silver sparkle pen,
Black marker,
Flower embellishment,
Bindis,
Glue,
A flat paintbrush,
Mod Podge (Glossy).

First, I took a plain cardboard and wrapped it with white paper with some glue to make it stay. I didn't have to cut the cardboard to the size of my bookmark- I just found one luckily that matched the size. After drawing a border on both sides with my silver sparkle pen, I got some embellishments from the nearby stationery shop. He is so fond of his stuff- one person who genuinely doesn't mind whether people buy his stuff but he wants everyone to have a look at it. I like going there just for his enthu. Anyway, so this blue flower really stood out from the rest of his embellishments and I decided to use it right away.

After sticking it onto the cardboard, I thought of writing something on the card. There was a quote I read on "Reading" some time back- Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own. ~William Hazlitt

Googled for Old English fonts and wrote the quote on it with my black marker. For quotes, calligraphy pens always work better than any other pens or markers. I couldn't find my calligraphy pen though, so had to settle for the marker.

I turned it over and started working on the back side. I cut three small purple flowers out of purple card paper, and stuck it onto the bookmark. Next, I made a small bar code with the black marker at the bottom right, and wrote my name and price.

My brother had got me three bottles of mod podge long back: glossy, matte and shimmer. As the description on the bottle says, it is a glue, a finish and a sealer! A dear friend, Sakhi introduced me to it and I have fallen in love with it :) I used the glossy one as "finish", meaning, I painted all over the bookmark- on both sides that is, with a flat paintbrush. My brother got these bottles from Michaels. In India, you may try looking for it in Hobby Ideas or any other well known craft shop.

I left it to dry for a few minutes, and stuck a blue satin bow on the front. Next, I stuck three silver bindis onto the three flowers at the back. And my bookmark was ready!