Homemade Flapbooks

Josh has been going through a real flapbook craze - he loves 'em. So I figured that I should get him one or two new books for our semi-annual trek to Utah next month. Then I found this on Sk*rt. How awesome is that? (Answer: very.)

So I decided to make my own.

Because I needed another project. (No, I did! I was bored! And it was a good excuse to ignore the housework that I don't like. Which is most of it.)

I had 70 free photo prints through CVS.com, which, in my opinion, is the perfect price for any project. I also had lots of scrap card stock paper that needed to be used, so I didn't need to buy an old book. (See tutorial.) I used three layers of card stock for each page, which is just about as thick as a board book.

I went around the house and snapped a bunch of pictures. Then I searched our old picture files for 'faces' I could use. I used Photoshop (*angelic choirs singing*) to make everything look good and to make the faces the right size. I also erased everything behind the faces and filled it in with a color to make them less distracting. I made the covers and text pages on Photoshop as well.

I cut all the card stock into 5x6 pieces. (A one inch margin for the binding.)

I decided to follow the advice of the tutorial and used spray glue. It was really good for making everything smooth. But it was really messy and got all over my hands, so I don't think I'd use it again.

I used an Exact-o knife to cut out the windows. I taped the faces to the back of the windows. The cutting and taping took a while, but then again, I'm a perfectionist!

Then I took everything to Kinkos to get the books bound. (Two boys = two books, otherwise TRAUMA on the plane!)

Total cost: spray glue - $3, binding - $8 = $11. Not bad, for personalized books!

I'm quite pleased with how they turned out. Here are a few of my favorite pages.


What do you think? (I'm almost afraid to let the kids play with them!)