Instead, make your bookmark even more special by using your own handwriting to write out that favorite quote on upcycled paper. Whether your handwriting is awesome or ugly, Tolkien’s best is still the most meaningful when written in your own hand.
To begin, source out a truly special piece of upcycled cardstock-weight paper; the back of the bookmark will remain unembellished, so this is a nice place to use an old record album cover that has a lovely graphic, or the box that contains your favorite brand of granola.
If you don’t mind the back of your bookmark being blank, you can use an old file folder, and if you want total creative control even over the back of your bookmark, you can sand down even an existing graphic and paint or embellish it however you’d like.
I think the most pleasing dimensions for a bookmark are 2″x6″, but, of course, the dimensions of your own bookmark are up to you. Measure out your favorite dimensions and cut the bookmark out by hand, or make yourself a template so that you can make tons of bookmarks for everyone in your life who has ever wanted a bookmark.
Using a miniature hole punch, you can either punch the hole at the top of your bookmark before you write your quote or after. You might like to punch your hole before, so that you don’t punch through any of your writing later; I like to punch after, so that my writing doesn’t get misaligned by trying to avoid that hole.
The most important part of this bookmark, however, is the writing! Choose a pen or pencil that is archivally safe, if you don’t want your writing to fade over time–it’ll happen more quickly than you think! I like to use a black Flair pen, but if you’re feeling extra fancy, calligraphy is always an option.
If you want the entirety of a particular passage on your bookmark, practice it in advance in the approximate space. Otherwise, you can just continue until your space runs out. I write pretty small, and I was able to write just about one entire page from a paperback on the particular bookmark in the photo above.
To make the bookmark’s tassel, cut twice the length of the bookmark from embroidery thread or yarn, then thread it through the hole punch and tie it around the top of the bookmark. Knot the ends of each thread and yarn piece so that it doesn’t unravel.
The only problem with this bookmark is that whenever I’m reading a book that’s NOT Harry Potter (it happens less often than you’d think…), glancing at my bookmark as I find my place always makes me want to stop what I’m doing and read Harry Potter again.
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1. Source some comic books. My local comic book shop has a back room full of comic books that are a quarter each. There are no diamonds to be found in this rough, you can be sure, but it’s pretty easy to find a bad comic book featuring your favorite characters (you can’t tell how 70s corny Tony Stark is drawn if he’s in his Iron Man suit!), or a comic book so awful that it’s awesome again (thosedinosaur mercenaries *might* have seemed cool to kids, but they also dated strippers, soooo… yeah) there.
Another great place to find comic books is anygarage sale, anywhere, and that’s also where you can find other great books that would also make good bookmarks. Seriously, wouldn’t you love a bookmark made from a page fromSweet Valley High? Or that Harry Potter with its cover ripped off? It needs to be made into bookmarks!
2. Fussy cut bookmark fronts. On a piece of scratch cardboard, draw a simple rectangle that’s about 2″x6″. Cut it out, round the corners if you’d like, and use it as a template to trace and cut out bookmark fronts.
Cut outside the lines of the bookmark fronts, and you’ll be able to neatly trim them after they’re attached to the bookmark backs.
3. Adhere the bookmark fronts to cardstock backs. The quickest, easiest method is to stick the bookmark fronts to adhesive-backed cardstock, then cut inside the lines of the bookmark to cut out the complete bookmark, front and back together.
You’ll have more options for cardstock, however, if you use glue or adhesive spray. You could use the cardboard from cereal boxes or other food packaging, record album covers, file folders, or anything with cardstock consistency that will give the needed sturdiness to the paper bookmark fronts.
Once the fronts and backs of the bookmarks are attached, and you’ve given enough time, if needed, for any adhesive to dry, cut just inside the lines of the bookmark front to neatly trim both front and back together.
4. Add a tassel. Use a hole punch with a small diameter to punch a hole in the top center of the bookmark, then add a tassel. Options for the tassel include embroidery floss, yarn, twine, necklace chains, or strips cut from T-shirts or plastic grocery bags.
No matter the material you use, cut it to twice the length of the bookmark, thread it through the hole, then double knot it at the top of the bookmark. Pieces such as embroidery floss or yarn will also need to be knotted at the other end to keep them from unraveling.
5. Seal the front? Maybe! If you’re worried about the fact that your bookmark front is likely made from a non-archival material, you may choose to seal it. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, though.
I think it’s better to have too many bookmarks rather than too few, so make as many of these bookmarks as you’d like, and to get buy-in from the kids, be sure to make some bookmarks out of their favorite things, too–that’s how our bookmark collection now includes Harry Potter, Thor and Iron Man, Garfield, G.I. Joe, Sherlock Holmes, and Spider-man.
And I'm always on the lookout for a super beat-up copy of The Hunger Games, if you've got one!
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!
A path tile game is a great introductory DIY board game, with tons of opportunities for creativity and infinite playability.
Tbh, I love making board and card games even more than I love playing them–and I love playing games! I really love taking a traditional game concept that’s been around forever, like chess or the Royal Game of Ur, and reskinning it with my own design, although I also have a lot of fun modifying more modern games for my own personal use; check out the Cards Against Mythology game that I made with my Girl Scout troop!
For this particular game, I decided that I wanted to make it for my four-year-old niece, so I wanted it to be fairly simple in shape and number of paths, and otherwise as open-ended as possible. I chose four bright colors for the paths, but otherwise kept the game un-themed so she could feel free to make up her own rules, enjoy the process of maze-building without gameifying it, or even incorporate the pieces into her own small-world play.
That means that this tutorial is for a square path tile game with four paths per square but no other theming or embellishments. Feel free to change the tile shape, number of paths, or anything else about your own game!
Materials
To make my simple version of the path tile game, you will need:
stiff chipboard, cardboard, or mat board. I used mat board for this project because I have plenty in my stash and I’m pretty stoked about using it up. Mat board definitely made for a wonderfully sturdy game, took marker like a champ, didn’t need to be sealed, and is so easy to source that adding new tiles won’t be a problem–as long as I remember what color markers I used, lol! If you’re looking for a quick and easy game to experiment with, drawing on the blank sides of cardboard food packaging would work perfectly well. If you’re looking for something heirloom quality, you could upgrade to wood-burned and watercolor-stained wood tiles.
measuring and cutting tools. Your tools will vary depending on your materials, but I measured with a clear plastic quilting ruler and a gridded cutting mat, and cut with a guillotine paper cutter and a craft knife.
embellishing tools. For this project, I used a mechanical pencil to measure and draw the paths, then four colors of Prismacolor marker to color them in and a black Flair pen to outline them.
Step 1: Measure and cut your tiles and mark your paths.
The first decisions you need to make consist of what shape and size you want your tiles to be and how many paths you want per tile. If you don’t want each tile to have a top and bottom, then they need to have rotational symmetry in both shape and path endings per side. For the path endings, I accomplished this by measuring and cutting a set of 50 2″x2″ tiles, then marking paths that began 3/16th of an inch from each corner and were each 3/16th of an inch wide. There’s then a 1/4″ gap between paths on each side.
It’s tedious work to go ahead and mark every path ending on every tile, but you’ll thank yourself for it later.
Step 2: Draw out the paths.
The next decision to make is what you want your paths to look like. I have eight path endings per tile, which means that I’ll have four paths per tile. These paths can look however you want, shaped however you want. Do you want angles to fit a robot theme? Scallopy edges because your playing pieces will be boats on the water? Do you want to insert a couple of dead ends or u-turns or other tricky traffic signs? You can do anything you want!
My family of four worked together to create our 50 tiles, and I like that you can see a stylistic difference between our tiles. I liked smooth lines and curves that matched, but another family member liked a lot of wavy lines and crazy curves, and another family member even added some loop-de-loops to their paths. The game was meant to be a handmade gift that was clearly from all of us, so in this case the stylistic differences were a feature, not a bug. If you want an overall more cohesive aesthetic, decide that from the beginning.
Mat board doesn’t erase particularly well, so make yourself a few extra practice path tiles if you really don’t want any faint pencil lines or eraser marks to show while you’re figuring out exactly how you want your paths to look.
Step 3: Color the paths.
This is my favorite part of the process!
You can choose any number of colors for your paths, but I decided on four colors that would each be represented by one path on each tile. You could make your paths all the same color, or a different color for every path throughout the entire game, but I really like the impossible prospect of trying to match path colors when I play–it’s randomly satisfying, for all that you can never perfectly match every color.
Carefully color in the paths, then outline the edges in black pen.
Step 4: Play!
This is such a fun game to play, with rules that are unlimited only by your imagination–if they exist at all! Add a couple of wooden game pieces that you’ve liberated from another board game (for this game, we spray painted DnD minifigs solid colors to match the paths), then decide if you want to try to run each other off the playing field, or if you battle when you meet on a path, or if touching orange moves you back to the beginning and loses you 100 points, or if you all have to try to get to a specific spot.
To store the game, build a box out of that same mat board, or repurpose another storage container. I really like this clear acrylic one that I rehomed from a bathroom drawer because it shows off the pretty colors of the game.
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Why, yes, this IS an oddly specific tutorial that I’m writing here. But what can I say? If you know a kid, do me a favor and try this: leave the computer and go ask that kid if she’d like to have a giant Minecraft grass block all of her own. I’ll wait right here, because trust me–you’ll be back, and you’ll be making this, too, and here’s how you’ll do it:
1. Score some cube-shaped cardboard boxes. This is the trickiest part of the project, because most cardboard boxes aren’t perfect cubes. You can cut down a larger cardboard box, but I volunteer weekly at a food pantry, and what I did was simply keep my eagle eyes out for the perfect type of box. One day, we got in a pallet-full of I Heart Keenwah snacks, and the boxes that those snack packs come in are perfect cubes! Tape the box closed, and you’re all set!
2. Download Minecraft grass block skin vectors. Google it, Baby! You want to find vector images so that you can size them up and down and the image will stay proportionate. My I Heart Keenwah boxes were 8 inches square, and using vector images allowed me to maintain the correct sizing of the pixels that make up the block.
You will need a top, bottom, and side image for the grass block. If you’re going to use the block as a party invitation, like we’re doing, then put the party info on the top. Resize the vector images so that they just fit on the sides of the box.
3. Print the images onto used paper. Use the back sides of paper that you’ve already used once.
4. Cut the images to size. A guillotine paper cutter is the best and quickest way to get smooth cuts.
5. Adhere the images to the box. You know how a cube goes together, right? Four sides, a top, and a bottom are what you’ll need, and don’t forget that the sides also have a top and bottom–grass above, dirt below. Use your favorite glue or double-sided tape to attach the images to the box.
6. Is it a party? Put the party invitation on top. My partner is a graphic designer, so he redid the vector for the top of the Minecraft grass block to include the details of the party invitation. You can get the same effect by simply gluing the invitation on top, or putting it into a pocket on the side of the block.
You could actually mail these invitation, although our particular plan is to doorbell ditch them on friends’ front porches. My kiddo spent so much time playing with the blocks before they were delivered, however, that we’re considering making another set to play with at the party, and for her to keep.
P.P.S. Want to know how that long-ago party went? Here it is!
P.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!
My house is… well, let’s call it “well-loved.” Door hardware aside, the house as a whole is wonky and inconvenient, quirky in a way that modern houses just aren’t, and whatever its quirks, I generally either genuinely like them or politely ignore them.
I do get curious about some things, though, and the four antique mortise locks on the four doors in the original part of my house are among those curiosity-inspiring objects. Although their keys are long gone, their keyholes are delightfully Victorian, but all the exposed pieces, plus the equally interesting door hinges, are covered in several thick layers of sloppily-applied paint. I don’t have any kind of yearning to restore my wonky old house to its original condition, but it would be pretty cool to clean and refurbish just those antique door fixtures, just to see what they actually look like…
So that’s what I did!
Step 1: Make sure you’re not going to get lead poisoning.
Lead poisoning is not worth playing with, so my first step before messing with ANYTHING old, from thrift store dishes to the awesome windows I found by the side of the road last fall, is to check it with a lead swab. These came out lead-free, although I tested again every time I uncovered a new layer of paint.
Sooo… these fixtures look awful. Once you realize that I’ve been living in my house for approximately 8 years and never before so much as blinked an eye at the pitiful state of these pieces, you’ll understand how house-proud I apparently am NOT.
Step 1: Remove the fixtures from the door.
For me, this involved muscling through five layers of paint to even get to the screw heads, and then muscling against those layers of paint to unscrew each screw. Fortunately, just a quick spray of WD-40 was all it took to get each rusty, painted-over screw turning.
You don’t need the water to be THIS soapy. I just like bubbles!
Step 2: Remove the paint.
There are a few methods for removing paint from old hardware, but the easiest, most eco-friendly way is simply to grab a beat-up old crock pot and boil the snot out of everything. I did this out on my back deck one sunny afternoon. Set the crock pot to low, add a squirt (or fifteen squirts, in my case…) of dish soap, and walk away. A few hours later, you can fish each piece out with tongs, set it on a piece of clean newspaper, and peel away the paint or gently scrape it off. If any paint still seems stuck, put the piece back in the crock pot for another couple of hours.
When you’re finished, your piece won’t look pretty, but it WILL look paint-free!
Step 3: Get distracted and therefore make more work for yourself.
You’re supposed to thoroughly dry each piece after scraping all the paint off. But… I don’t know. One kid might have needed help factoring a polynomial, or the other kid might have wanted me to drive her to pick up holds at the library, or maybe a friend texted me, or heck, maybe I saw a squirrel. Who knows? Whatever happened to interrupt me after paint scraping but before thorough drying, it resulted in me eventually wandering back by the deck and noticing that all of my nice door hardware that I had spent all that time cleaning off had rust ALL over it.
Pro tip: Your cleaned pieces will rust VERY quickly if not dried thoroughly!
Step 4: Remove rust from the door hardware.
If your piece doesn’t have any paint on it, but it’s dirty and rusty, you can start here. Or if you’re like me, and you have the attention span of a gerbil, continue here! Fortunately, removing a thin layer of rust is SUPER simple. I put my metal pieces in a shallow dish, covered them with vinegar, and let them sit for a couple more hours on my deck.
After a couple of hours, I took the pieces inside and used a soft cloth and cool running water to rub away the residue and rinse off the vinegar.
THEN I DRIED EACH PIECE THOROUGHLY.
Step 5: Polish the hardware.
Your end result isn’t going to be a gorgeous, like-new piece of door hardware. I mean, fifty years ago someone first painted over that piece for a reason, right? So I was a little disappointed, sure, but not too terribly surprised that my clean, rust-free, paint-free door hardware shows a lot of wear. The pieces are also brass-plated, not solid brass, and the brass plating has worn away in several spots.
You actually CAN re-plate antique pieces, but I’m not going to. Instead, I polished each piece with #0000 steel wool. You’ll find this in your local hardware store with the sandpaper, not with the cleaning supplies, because this is fine steel wool for polishing, not scrubbing.
Step 6 (optional): Repair and restore.
after I had cleaned and polished the pieces, I was actually able to see a manufacturer’s stamp on the hinges that were previously completely covered with paint and crud. That particular stamp was only used between 1920 and 1934, so I’m pretty stoked!
Unfortunately, I can’t find any specific information on my mortise locks, although I do hope to restore those to functionality. Here’s a site that sells parts for several varieties of antique locks, and another site that sells skeleton keys that, while they aren’t guaranteed to work on any particular lock, aren’t so spendy that they’re not worth gambling on.
Step 7 (optional): Seal the hardware.
I did not seal my door hardware, because I’m willing to live with it a while first. My area doesn’t get terribly humid, and I’m curious to see how the hardware will fare without being sealed. If its condition starts to deteriorate, I have no problem with the extra steps of popping it back off the door, cleaning the rust off (again), and sealing it.
However, if you want to ensure that the pieces that you worked so hard on stay as nice and shiny as they look right this second, you can coat them with any sealant that works on metal. None of your options are particularly eco-friendly, but if it keeps an antique piece out of the waste stream and allows you to get by without buying new hardware, it’s a net good.
The final result isn’t door hardware that looks brand-new, but it IS door hardware that looks clean, feels authentic, and is much, much, MUCH preferable to what it looked like before!
Now I just have to scrape those same five layers of paint off of the door, too…
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If you want a winter pick-me-up (AND a way to finish up all that ground cinnamon you bought for holiday baking), you will be delighted with cinnamon dough.
Cinnamon dough smells amazing. It’s as easy to make and use as play dough. It dries to near-permanence with just a couple of hours in the oven. It’s been my favorite winter activity to do with my kids ever since they were tiny.
Here’s all you need to make your own batch of cinnamon dough:
one cup of cinnamon. Yes, one CUP!!! This project is made for those people (*cough, cough* it me *cough*) who overbuy the giant spice container every winter out of a fear of somehow running out during holiday baking. The struggle IS real, though: one year I 100% found myself Googling “DIY powdered sugar” at 9pm on Christmas Eve, and I never want to relive that experience.
up to 5 tsp aromatic spices. I like to put in those spices that I know I’m not going to use before they expire (I’m looking at you, Allspice! And YOU, Ground Cloves!).
.5 to 1 cup applesauce. Choose the cheapest store-brand sugar-free applesauce for this, although I won’t judge you if you find yourself panic-emptying a couple of pouches because you simply cannot go back to the freaking grocery store one more time today. Once upon a time, I made my kids a batch of play dough using organic flour because that’s what I had on hand. It wasn’t my finest moment, but I DID get to stay in my jammy pants!
cookie sheet.
Step 1: Mix all ingredients.
Add all the dry ingredients to a bowl, then stir to combine.
Starting with 1/2 cup applesauce, mix/knead the applesauce into the other ingredients in batches. I’ve never figured out exactly why my cinnamon dough requires a slightly different amount of applesauce every year–is it the humidity? The age/variety of spices? It’s not the applesauce itself, because I always use that exact kind in the photo–but indeed, I make this cinnamon dough every single winter, and every single winter I have to play the exact amount of applesauce by ear.
You’re looking for a consistency like any other dough in your life–not crumbly, not sticky. If you’re working with younger kids, err on the side of making the dough a little wet and sticky, because a crumbly dough that doesn’t hold together with ease is almost immediately frustrating to little kids.
And yes, I’m sorry, but you will have to get your hands into it. It’s dough! If it’s any consolation, though, cinnamon is pretty nice for your skin!
Step 2: Decorate!
You can sculpt with this cinnamon dough just like you would with any dough, but my family’s favorite way to enjoy it has always been to get out the cookie cutters and make ornaments and garlands.
To make your own cinnamon dough ornaments, roll the dough no thicker than 1/4″, then cut with cookie cutters. Make a small hole for stringing onto a garland using the tip of a chopstick, or a larger hole for attaching an ornament hanger using a straw.
If you’re making a fiddly design, you can roll the dough directly onto parchment paper, then move your design, parchment paper and all, onto the cookie sheet for baking.
Just beware of trying to work with the dough when it’s cold from the refrigerator. It’s fine to store the dough in the fridge for a couple of weeks, but it will cooperate a LOT better at room temperature.
Step 3: Bake.
While you’re working with the dough, preheat the oven to around 200 degrees (depending on my oven’s capabilities over the years, I’ve used temps anywhere between 200-250 degrees with similar results. One of these days, I’ll even get around to experimenting with my dehydrator!).
This dough won’t expand, so don’t worry about placement; just set them onto an ungreased cookie sheet and set the time for an hour.
After one hour, I like to check on my ornaments and flip them. See in the above photo how the centers of the larger ornaments that I just flipped over are darker? That’s the bottom middle that hasn’t dried yet, so flipping them over and putting them back in the oven lets them dry out evenly.
After a couple of hours, the ornaments should start to be ready, depending on how big they are. I start to check on them about every 20 minutes, removing the ones that are bone-dry whenever I check. I don’t really enjoy a lot of hands-on kitchen stuff, so I’m always VERY excited when that last ornament is dry and I can finally turn the oven off!
Step 4: Attach ornament hangers.
This year, my teenager and I combined these cinnamon dough ornaments with dried grapefruit slices to make some lovely (and lovely-smelling!) winter garlands that we hope to keep on display through February.
I tied loops of embroidery floss through the holes on the other ornaments, and we put them right onto our tree.
With careful storage, these cinnamon dough ornaments should last for multiple years. A couple of years ago, after probably a decade of making them yearly and storing the survivors (it’s hard to be a Christmas tree ornament in this house!) with our other ornaments in the garage during the off-seasons, all of our cinnamon dough ornaments came out of storage a little moldy. They must have gotten damp or come into contact with something that ruined them, but it remains a mystery!
But whether you try to store them (I think I *will* try again this year!) or simply compost them in the Spring, or even just enjoy the dough as a process-oriented sensory experience and don’t keep them at all, I think this cinnamon dough will be a delightful addition to your winter craft projects!
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