Book plates for all you bibliophiles

We made our own bookplates! Well, I made the bookplates and E donated some of the artwork. Here's how:

1. Scan one of your child's favorite artwork. I used the butterfly we did last summer.

2. In a paint or photo editing program, resize, crop, and add a white box and your name

3. OR... Use scrapblog.com to find backgrounds and clipart you like and create most of your bookplate in their online program. Copy the screen (hit "print screen" on a PC) and paste into your own paint program.

4. In Photoshop I added the white square and E's butterfly to the picture I'd already created in scrapblog.

5. I sized my image 3x4 inches so that two could fit on a 4x6 index card.

6. I printed out on an index card, trimmed, and mod-podged to the inside of the book. Sizing for a sheet of labels might be easier, but I have 500+ index cards here that I need to start using up.

Too complicated? There are plenty of free printables online:

- Red border bookplate from Skip to My Lou
- Educated Forest Critters bookplates from Orange You Lucky
- Adorable Retro Animals bookplates from Sweet Jessie
- 4 Modern bookplate designs from Urban Nest
- 6 Round bookplates from Beach Brights

Now that our personal library is protected from forgetful friends, here's a book that's all about librarians...

The Boy Who Was Raised by Librarians by Carla Morris

Melvin is at the Livingston Library so often he practically lives there. The three reference librarians follow Melvin throughout his school years, always making time to recommend books and answer his questions. Even when Melvin goes off to college, he keeps in touch with these special ladies, eventually returning to them... as a colleague!

This quaint story of dedicated, modern librarians comes to life through marvelous detailed illustrations. The pictures convey the larger-than-life personalities of all three librarians as Melvin - and they - grow older. Geared toward K-4, I think even younger children will be drawn in by these remarkable pictures of the life inside a contemporary library.


I'm linking up with:
- Get Your Craft On @ Today's Creative Blog