Tag Archives: laminating craft

May23

Hand-print Bookmarks

Posted on May 23, 2015 by TodayWeDid

For Mother’s Day this year we made bookmarks using the hand-prints of the kids. I found some old scrapbooking papers that had pink or blue heart patterns on them to use as our base for the hand-prints.

Using the paint pad.

A’s hand-prints.

Each child chose the background paper to use, and the colour of paint for their hand-print. Predictably A chose pink on pink for her bookmarks. L used the rainbow paint pad for her hand-prints on the back on the blue paper. Unfortunately the rainbow paint didn’t come out as clearly as the other paint, but L liked it as it was. The boys used blue paint on blue paper. Using paint pads for hand-prints makes it easy to get a good amount of paint on the hand, and is much less messy than using conventional paint.

Hand-prints.

After the hand-prints were dry, I carefully cut around each hand. The kids wrote some lovely messages on the back of one of their hands using a marker. A pushed down her marker quite hard, and the ink is visible through the hand-print. She also drew a lot of love hearts! I love it because it is so unique.

Writing a message on the back of the hand-print.

To finish the bookmarks I laminated the hand-prints. I arranged the hand-prints so that A’s hands and Baby T’s hands were together to make a bigger bookmark each, while L’s hand-print was big enough as one. I also did a single print of my hand to make a bookmark for my mum. Once laminated, I carefully cut around the hand-prints so that there was a small amount of plastic laminate around each one. The kids were happy with their bookmarks.

One of the boy’s bookmarks.

A hand-print bookmark in my latest read.

Oct26

Rainbow Bookmarks

Posted on October 26, 2014 by TodayWeDid

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I really love my laminator, it is so useful! Apart from preserving the children’s awards and other valuable mementos, it makes creating unique and durable bookmarks a breeze.

For these fantastic rainbow bookmarks, we used colour diffusing paper (I bought it from Modern Teaching Aids). This sort of paper sucks up the colour and spreads it and mixes it, creating unusual and interesting patterns. Paper towel and coffee filters also provide a similar effect. This paper works well with water colour paints. Using felt tip markers (textas) to draw on the paper, and then using a spray bottle to wet the paper will also cause the colour to spread and mix. But for bright, vibrant colours, we always come back to using a few drops of food colouring in a small amount of water.

The kids used pipettes to place the coloured water onto the paper. They did big squirts and little drops, lines and puddles, using a range of colours. They enjoyed watching the colour spread out, and making new colours by overlapping the food colouring. They filled up each page with brilliant colour, and in A’s case, so much colour that some of the paper was actually dripping when I laid it out to dry!

A tray of food colouring and pipettes.

Big spots.

And little dots. The blue and red puddle is mixing to give purple.

Making lines.

I laid each of the wet pages out on a piece of scrap cardboard to dry flat.

Once these pages are dry, we can use them as beautiful and unique papers for any of our paper crafts.

Still wet paper.

Still wet. The pattern from the much mat can be seen through it.

A chose one sheet of paper to use for our bookmarks. The page was 30cm long, so I cut out six bookmarks, each 5cm across, by the width of the paper. I drew a faint pencil line on the back of the paper using a ruler to keep it straight, and then cut them apart. We fit three of these paper strips into an A4 laminating pocket, leaving plenty of room between the strips to make sure the plastic was properly sealed around the paper. L helped me position the laminating pocket and feed it into the laminator. It only takes a few moments for the laminating to finish, and then a few more to cool down.

The same page, dry and ready to use.

I carefully cut the new bookmarks apart from each other, leaving a border of plastic seal around each one. I rounded the corners of each bookmark to remove the sharp point. L punched a hole in the top of each bookmark, and chose a ribbon to thread through the top. Once the ribbons were tied, the bookmarks were finished and ready to be used.

The paper cut into strips.

In the laminating pocket ready to be laminated.

Finished bookmarks.

Jan16

Animal Magnets

Posted on January 16, 2014 by TodayWeDid

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Lots of spare animal cards.

Last year Woolworths wowed all the kids with their Aussie Animal Cards to collect. And then came the baby wildlife Aussie Animal Cards just before Christmas. L and A got to collecting them, and filling up their albums, but they were left with lots of spares. When the promotion finished, we didn’t quite have the full set. Our friends were very generous in giving us their spares to try to complete our sets, and now I think we are only short one card. However, there is a huge stack of spares left, and most people we know already have a full set, and still have spares. The kids like looking through all the spares, but I thought they might be able to be put them to a better use.

I received a new laminator for Christmas, and I was keen to try it out. L picked out five of the Aussie Animal Cards, and I placed them into an A4 laminating pouch and laminated them. I cut around each card, making sure there were no pointy corners. We glued some magnets to the back of each one. We tried some of the magnets at the top of the card, and some in the centre, both worked well.