Ladybird bookmarks and photographing projects

My next craft fair is looming on the horizon and although I have plenty of stock left from last month, I want to add a few new things in to keep any repeat customers interested. I was quite surprised to find there were no cards or papercrafts on sale last time so I'm going to try to fill that gap.

Although I'm not a hugely keen card maker, I do enjoy making bookmarks. They make very acceptable gifts, either to add to a book or book token, or as a small gift in themselves. I've made them using vintage copyright-free images in the past, but these are my latest bunch, using pages from old Ladybird nature books. I've collected old Ladybird books for years - they are always so beautifully illustrated, and I can't pass by if I see one in a charity shop even if it is in "very well-used" condition - and even if it's a title I already have! I've used duplicates from my collection to make these bookmarks and added small greetings cards to match.






To make the bookmarks I've die-cut two layers, one from the book page and the other from cardstock, and stitched them together with a piece of muslin sandwiched between. The cardstock is stamped with a suitable image and a bookish quote from PTI's All Booked Up before stitching.

Now, something else. As you can see from the images in this post, I'm not very good at photographing my projects (why some of these have come out pink I do not know!). Bookmarks are not the easiest things to photograph anyway, and I resorted to a digital frame and Photoshop here. But I'm seldom pleased with how my photos turn out no matter where or when or how I try to get a good image. So I'm really excited to read about Lisa Spangler's new card photography series on her Sideoats & Scribbles blog today. I'm definitely going to play along with this project and for my first assignment I'm going to try photographing the paper aeroplane card in the bath - without the water of course!


Stamps used: various images from Lavinia Stamps, Papertrey's All Booked Up plus some sentiments, Darkroom Door's Wildflower
Other: Papertrey's bookmark die