mini bag, notebooks and other yummy gifts

I made more mini notebooks last week, as a little thank you gift for Oliver’s teacher and teaching assistants. They are the same as the crafty ribbons mini notebooks I made, in that they have perforated pages and are stitch-bound; the covers are a little different in style – I wanted them to be personal, and I thought rather than Oliver drawing cards for his teachers I could use his drawings as the cover of the notebooks, they will be reminded of him every time they write a note! He wrote a little thank you to each teacher on the first page of their notebook.



Oliver drew some lovely little birds (he loves birds). He drew a blue-tit, a cockatiel and a robin. I added polka-dot fabric behind his drawings, which was fixed onto the card cover with bondaweb, then the drawings were trimmed to fit and stuck in place with double-sided tape, then I machine-stitched around the edges. We also bought some yummy dark chocolate mint truffles (we can testify to the yumminess as we shared a box at home too!) and used a green (school colour) gingham ribbon to tie each notebook with the choc box.



I also made another little bag like the crafty ribbons mini beach bag I made, this one was a birthday gift for one of Cyan’s friends. We gave her a play dough ice cream set (a bargain buy – I bought a few to use for gifts over the summer) so I used the ice-cream Fun in the Sun ribbon I had from the Crafty Ribbons challenge. Cyan made another of her cute little bracelets – it has become a habit making bracelets for her friends birthdays.



I was going to make another mini ribbon notebook to match.. but time was short.. and I remembered we had some mini princess colouring books left over which I made to go in party bags for Cyan’s birthday last year. They were covered with cute scrapbook prints and the cupcake one went nicely with the ice-cream bag!

mini notebooks ~ fun in the sun crafty ribbons

I made these little notebooks for my second part of the Crafty Ribbons Fun in the Sun challenge, using various Fun in the Sun ribbons along with some other ribbons from my stash to cover the fronts of these little notebooks. I was going to make a couple of different ones.. I got a bit carried away working out cute ribbon combos and ended up making five!









The first was made to match the mini beach bag I made..





I made these books from mixed pastel coloured printer paper, with covers from offcuts of cardstock. I stitched them on my sewing machine to bind them. I also ran the inner pages through the machine with no thread first – to perforate the sheets – this means pages can be torn out if required. My inspiration for these notebooks came from Camille over at the Mother*Lode who made some cute little books for her kids to doodle in.



As an afterthought I added some really cute little 3D sticker embellishments and little puffy gingham hearts from my stash, which coordinated perfectly with all the ribbons. I used Mod Podge to stick the ribbons and embellishments, on reflection it was maybe not the best thing to stick the ribbons, but I just bought it recently and have been dying to try it out on something!

Oliver has been drooling over these today as I was finishing them off – so I have promised to make up some more for him and Cyan in a larger size which they can use for doodle pads.. Oliver’s favourite is (predictably) the goldfish version, I can't decide which is my favourite – they all turned out so cute!

Linked:

dinosaur coloring puzzle books

I designed these dinosaur coloring books as party favors to go in the dinosaur fabric party bags I made for Oliver’s dinosaur themed birthday party, using vector outline versions of Karl’s dinosaur illustrations, these coordinate with the invitations which use coloured versions of the same dinosaur illustrations.

The books are full of puzzles including dot-to-dot, word search, odd one out, two the same, spot the difference, maze, match dino footprints… There are pages with dinosaurs to colour, and puzzle pages can be coloured too for maximum colouring enjoyment!

I’ve just made up 25 dinosaur coloring books which are to go with the 25 party bags for my first Etsy order. I have given them a new look by printing the inner pages on mixed pastel paper, the covers are on slightly heavier cream paper stock. The originals were on cream paper throughout. Oliver approves of the new colourful versions! I am also making dinosaur crayons to go with this order.