We had a lot of fun this past weekend making doll house notebooks and putting our interior design skills to the test by filling each interior room with magazine clippings of various furniture and decor items. It was so much fun!
To make these we used various shades of ASTROBRIGHTS® card stock in beautiful blues for the exterior. Our favorites include Terrestrial
For the interior pages we used Amelia’s favorites ASTROBRIGHTS® pinks and purples in Outrageous Orchid™ and Pulsar Pink™. She loved dressing up her houses with interior images from magazine clippings as well as drawing in her own details (my favorite part!). We then bound everything together with a simple Japanese bookbinding stitch.
Supplies you will need to make one of your own:
- Astrobrights card stock in various colors (two sheets per house)
- Astrobrights copy weight paper (approx.10-15 sheets per house booklet)
- acrylic craft paints
- small hole punch or book binding dowel (or even the tip of a pencil)
- embroidery thread or string
- needle
Making the house notebooks:
- Cut a roof shape from top of the 8.5 x 11 card stock.
- Trace this shape onto your interior pages and cut to the same, or slight smaller, dimensions of your exterior pages.
- Sandwich the interior papers between the exterior card stock and make four markings on the left side for the binding. We just eyeballed where we would put our holes but you can measure it out to your liking.
- Using your markings, Poke or punch holes into the papers. You can poke them using a book binding dowel or punch them in smaller sections with a small hole punch or even the tip of a pencil.
- Thread your needle with your thread or string. Cut length of thread so that it’s at least 5 x’s the length of the side of your book.
- Start sewing through the back side of the second hole. We used these instructions to finish off this Japanese sewing technique.
- Using your craft paints finish off the exterior by painting on fun roof tiles, a door, windows or whatever inspires you.
- let paint dry.
- While paint is drying you can cut out furniture and decor items from magazines.
- Or draw in scenes yourself. Have fun with it!
This idea is just so darling!
Thank you for sharing!
oh thanks Traci! It’s so fun and easy. xo Mer
Oh it’s so cute! It’s a great idea, I think my daughter will love it. 🙂
So I’d love to know, mother-to-mother, how you balance creative crafting time like this with your kids and meal making/cleaning/fight-breaking-up? I used to do all kind of projects, and then my kids came along and I had high hopes but little energy and time. Do you do a lot of these in your studio or an art room that you can just leave messy? What is the magic key??
Hi Emily,
Thanks for asking. Mother-to-mother i definitely don’t do a perfect job of this. I have to let things slide sometimes (notice I never post dinner recipes? It’s not my forte – at all) and we pick and choose days. I try to stick with simple crafts with only one or two paint colors (making clean up easier and the crafts more appealing in less is more way – although rainbow crafts are great too for sure, we just do a lot of them over here). We line crafts that are easy and involve a spot of creative flair for the kids. Making it fun for them and something we can help start but then walk away from and get other things done. It’s never convenient though. In fact today we played Jane Goodall all day long today when I really only had about 45 min I could dedicate to it. So I let her do a lot of it on her own coming back to me with games and ideas that I’d try to do while working. It’s crazy for sure! But worth it looking back at how fast they grow. You’ve got this mamma! xo
This is a wonderful idea. I love your suggestion to cut out magazine furniture to decorate the house. I think my daughter would love to use it to write stories in! Thanks for the inspiration.
oh it would be perfect for stories. Thanks for touching base and commenting. I hope your daughter loves it. xo Mer