Working and Progressing: Comic Book Bookmarks

My days are still quite occupied with putting things into clear plastic bins here (and teaching my students about racism in King Kong, sorting through the kids' clothes to see what needs winterizing, reading Melissa Gilbert's GREAT memoir, and shuttling the kids to various playgrounds and playgroups all over the world, it seems), and it really has become quite the revelation: SIX plastic bins of Legos? The bin I bought for toy dinosaurs STILL isn't big enough? I am getting sort of fond of watching the nice rows of stacked bins appear on shelves where previously were, you know, some pretty baskets and vintage tins with a huge mound of random stuff piled on top--it's starting to look like the Mythbusters workroom, and you know how much we love the Mythbusters over here.

The study/studio is coming together a little more slowly--I'm thinking of organizing the clear plastic bins into a system something like Montessori, or like the homeschool workbox method, for both me and the kids. Like the blank cardboard puzzles that the kids like to decorate go into one box along with a couple of packages of the markers they use to decorate them, and my solder and flux and copper tape and glass bits all go (sorted) into the same box since I use them together. And then you can take one box out, do your project, and put that box back away again--what a wonder that would make of my life.

Anyway, I did take a brief break yesterday after taking the kids to the local hands-on science museum and school and home again and before heading off to my own class with the DVD of the 1933 edition of King Kong in hand to make something that has been dwelling on my mind since the Strange Folk Festival craft fair:

At one of the handmade books vendors at Strange Folk, they were giving away a free record album cover bookmark with every purchase--a piece of album cover cut into a bookmark shape, punched at the top with a ribbon through it. Super cool, and I immediately wanted to try it out with comic books. Above is my first attempt, out of an old Dungeons and Dragons comic--I like the size and shape of the bookmark, and the sturdiness of the laminate, and the look of the cording at the top, but my partner wants to see a version that's thicker, and I want to try some options that will let me tie a vintage bead or two onto the cording.

Tutorial will appear when I've got it down--stay tuned.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!