Easy Bookmarks

These bookmarks are very simple to make with just a few items from your craft box and a few spare minutes, my children often like to make them. So I thought I would make a special one for my husband with faux leather and little wooden hearts especially with Valentines day in mind.

First collect together the items to be used, in this case faux leather, heart shaped wooden buttons and an elastic hair tie. Any fabric or ribbons can be used here, your designs can reflect your interests or those of the person you intend to use the bookmark.

Mark out your required size of bookmark, I have made mine the width of the ruler and around 30 centimetres long... however you could make it smaller or longer depending on the size of books most commonly read. Try out a few lengths on your books to see which size you prefer and remember to take the seams into account.

Next fold the end of the fabric over the hair tie and stitch a hem as seen above, this will hold your hair tie in place. As this is faux leather it will not fray but if you are using ribbon or fabric it's best to hem each end of your bookmark.

Then stitch on your buttons, you could use just one button on the opposite side to the hair tie allowing you to hook the tie over the button to keep your page. With valentines day in mind I have sewn on two heart buttons, one on each end to symbolise our two hearts being drawn together.

As you can see it securely saves your page with no risk of it falling out like a conventional bookmark. Just to show you an alternative design....

This is my daughter's bookmark, as you can see she has used a pretty ribbon and colourful star shaped buttons for it.

She also has an added feature on her bookmark...an extra button, this allows the same bookmark to be used for many different sizes of books. Children's books vary so much in size from one to another that this gives her the choice of bookmark size.

As you can see in the photograph above the extra button allows her to securely bookmark her pages in a range of different size books. A very simple craft for your little readers to try.