Wood bookmarks

I have been on a bit of a bookmark kick lately. It’s an instant gratification type of project, and I need that when I am working on long knitting or embroidery projects. (As a result, I have about 30 bookmarks here and there, so I need to get rid of some. Maybe a fun giveaway some time soon?)

I came up with this idea from Barnes and Noble. You know that rack of bookmarks that they have by the check out? There is like a thousand bookmarks and I want to buy all of them, especially the pretty wooden ones. I don’t know why. I hardly read paper books anymore. I don’t know – there is just something frivolous and luxurious about having a little treasure tucked away in your book. But, instead of buying them, I wanted to tackle my own.

Mission accomplished. Wood bookmarks.

I used 1/16″ balsa wood and die in my Cuttlebug to get the bookmark shape. The balsa wood was a bit tricky to find but not impossible. I had to go to a hobby store to find it – not Hobby Lobby or Joann’s – a comic book/model train hobby store. Interesting place. Sawyer liked it because they had a dog that lived in the store. And fish. It was odd. Back to the bookmarks. I got one long piece for less than $2.00 and made about 5 bookmarks from it.

Here are a few of my favorites.

I love the tail part of this one. I used 5 colors of embroidery thread and made a sort of tassel. The flowers are punched out of paper and glued on. I thought about Mod Podging them on, but decided it would probably darken the wood so I didn’t. This one is for me, so I am not worried about the durability.

I colored the green one with a Copic marker and tied on some baker’s twine for the tail. Simple, but a pretty punch of color.

This is my favorite. After I die cut the bookmark, I ran it through again in an embossing folder. Yep, I die cut and embossed wood. As a result, this one is pretty fragile. It will hold up in a book on a shelf, but it is not something you would want to give to child or to put in a “high traffic” book that gets thrown in and out of bags. I used plain twine for the tail. I love that there is no color, but so much texture. Pretty.

A couple things about this project that you might want to know…

– I also attempted to cut the wood with scissors (for all those who don’t have a die cut machine, I wanted to see if you could make these also) but it didn’t go so well. The wood is very thin and didn’t cut perfectly. Maybe with some practice or different techniques you could master it.

-I tried stamping on the wood. The ink bled, so it was a no go for me. Bummer.

-If you would like to add more stability to your bookmark, die cut a card stock bookmark and glue the two together. It will give it a bit more bulk and make the wood less likely to crack.

Happy reading!