Dried Flower Bookmarks

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This week is my 4th Annual Book Inspired Craft Week. Each day this week I will be sharing a favorite book and pairing it with a craft project inspired by the book. A lot of the books I have shared in this series are books from my childhood, books that I remember reading and loving. Others are favorites of my kids, books that have helped them gain a love of reading. The book that I chose for the first project this year is one that I read as a kid- The Secret Garden.

I had actually had this book on my list a couple of years ago and I had planned a floral embroidery project, but I ended up deciding on a different book and project and The Secret Garden went back to the list of books to maybe use someday. 

When I added it back to my list of books to use this year I planned to do the same project I had decided on a couple of years ago. But then I started thinking of other ideas and realized there were so many different projects I could make. Pretty much anything with flowers, which opened up so many different ideas, the embroidered flowers I originally thought of, felt flowers, fabric flowers, anything made of fabric with flowers on it, paper flowers, etc., or what I ended up deciding to go with- dried flowers. 

I had the idea to do something like bookmarks with dried flowers and was thinking of different ways to make it work, things like gluing them to paper and laminating, cutting up laminating pouches, or using clear contact paper to make bookmarks. But as I was looking I found that there were kits available for exactly the kind of bookmarks I was envisioning. They came with precut bookmark shaped laminating pouches, plus the one I got also came with tassels and a few dried flowers. I decided that was perfect and would make for a super easy project so I went ahead and ordered a kit. 

The bookmarks were really simple to make, although the flowers can be a little finicky to work with. I wish I had grabbed some tweezers to make picking them up and placing them where I wanted a little bit easier, but even without them it was pretty easy to put the bookmarks together. I was really nervous that I would get the flowers laid out the way I wanted and then they would all slip around and move when I tried to put it in the laminator, but that was not the case. Obviously you want to be gentle when picking them up and moving them around, but they are kind of stick together with static so they stay together a lot better than I thought they would. 

Once I had the flowers placed the way I wanted it just took a quick pass through the laminator and I had a cool pressed flower bookmark. I think this would be a really fun craft for a girls night, or a book club, a youth activity, etc. It was a fairly inexpensive craft too. There were a lot of different options on Amazon depending on how many you want, the amount of flowers included, colors of tassels, price range, and the shape and size of the bookmarks. The one I bought was about $10 for enough bookmarks and tassels for 30 bookmarks, you would need more flowers than what comes in the kit to make that many but you can find packs of those on Amazon as well

How to Make Dried Flower Bookmarks

You will need:

• Laminated Bookmark Pouches (or laminating pouches that you can cut down to the size you want)
• Laminator
• dried flowers
• tassels 
• tweezers (optional but very helpful)

Instructions:

For my bookmarks I used bookmark size laminating pouches that were already sized and made to be bookmarks, you can find lots on Amazon in different shapes and sizes, or you can use regular laminating pouches and cut them to the size you need. 

Begin by turning on you laminator so that it can begin heating up. The pouches I used were 5 mil so I used the setting on my laminator for that weight. 

Open up the laminating pouch and carefully add the dried flowers where you want them to be placed, being sure to leave a little space around the edge so it will fully seal.

When you are happy with the placement carefully pick up your bookmark and insert it folded edge first into the laminator. 

When it is finished you can add a tassel for a cute finishing touch. My set came with some tassels and the holes in the bookmarks were pre-punched so I added one to each of my finished bookmarks.