Last month was my birthday, and all I asked for was books. Now, I have a lot of new books! And while I love the scuffed up and torn bookmarks my kids have made me, I wanted to try something.
Supplies:
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- Scrap ribbons
- little magnets
Tools:
- Glue gun and glue sticks (I only needed 1 glue stick)
- Scissors
Step 1: Cut ribbons. I had a lot of ribbon to play with, and I’ll tell you right now that the simpler ribbon worked best for this. I really liked the look of the thicker, super-decorative ribbon that had stiffer edges, but the wire in the edges stopped the ribbon from bending easily like I wanted for these bookmarks.
I made these bookmarks a few different ways, but I cut each ribbon about 4-5 inches long. This gives you room to fold the cut ends over to protect and hide the ends, and it leaves enough room so the loop sticks out nicely from the book to look cute.
Step 2: Glue ends folded over. To protect the ends and hide the cuts, I first folded over each end slightly and used a little trail of hot glue to pin the end down. I did this for every ribbon’s ends, then moved on.
Step 3: Glue magnets onto the ribbons. With each ribbon’s “ugly” folded side facing up, I positioned a magnet at each end, covering the folded, glued part. I put the glue on the ribbon rather than the backside of the magnet, then pushed the magnet gently onto the ribbon until it stuck in place.
Before gluing them down, BE SURE that the sides of the magnets that will face each other attract rather than repel.
For my widest ribbon, I put 2 magnets at each end just because I thought that would work better, and it helped this one be more stable at the end too.
Step 4: Add decorative finishes over the magnets. If you’re happy with how your magnets cover the ribbon at this point, you honestly could end here and the magnet bookmark would work fine. For my narrow ribbons, the magnet/ribbon combinations left a little space around the sides of the magnet that I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want to make these too bulky because then the books wouldn’t close very well, so I needed thin options for covering the magnet ends.
Option A: For one of my narrow-ribbon bookmarks, I simply added magnets onto the front too. This way of doing it was probably my favorite (certainly the easiest). I like that the magnets can connect either from the front or back this way too.
Option B: For my narrow green ribbon, I wanted to do something a little fun because these were for my girls. Since my eldest’s favorite book (which is completely coincidentally written by her mother) is green and purple, I took about 2.5 inches of purple ribbon and first glued the cut ends folded over.
Then I put a few dabs of glue on one side of the magnet, lined up the ribbon to cover this side, wrapped the ribbon around the magnet, and put dabs of glue on the other side so that the magnet was covered by the ribbon.
These kind of look like little book covers themselves on the ends of the ribbon, and that would be a REALLY CUTE way to decorate these, if you draw on these ends to make them look like little books. You could even use a paint marker and put initials with little borders, or something. Lots of options!
I was a little worried that the ribbon around the magnets would keep them from working, but my magnets were strong enough to still have a good hold, even with the ribbon and several pages between them when I tested this on a real book.
Option C: For my widest ribbon, I could have left it alone because the magnets were definitely covered by the ribbon. But, I wanted to add a little decorative touch to this one . You could use other ribbon along the ends or lace or something special to you…but I liked this Kleenex box’s art and used that. 😆
Cutting off some of the box’s cardboard, I glued it onto the ends of the ribbon on the outer, decorative side rather than the side where the magnets would connect. This doesn’t block the magnets from connecting at all.
DONE!
That was it for each one I did. You could do these a lot of different ways, but this was the basic method I followed, and I like how these turned out. I even did the shake test for each one, and they held in place inside my books really well! My paper bookmarks certainly don’t stay put, and now I have a great way to hold my place when reading any of my new birthday gifts…although I did take pictures with my own books. 😆
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