I totally stole this idea from my friend Jodi, who made them for her husband and dad last year. While I’m content to use anything as a bookmark (magazine subscription card, piece of junk mail, scrap of paper, another book), Dan feels he needs to use a “proper” bookmark. And because he reads about 20 times as much as I do, I thought I would oblige.
Since Elise is rather uncooperative in front of the camera, I didn’t think we would have much of a chance taking any good photos in an actual photobooth. So I took a bunch of shots at home while she was behaving. Yes, we both need haircuts.
I picked out the ones I liked best, cropped them, changed them to grayscale and resized them in Photoshop. Then I arranged them in a photobooth-like strip. I know photo strip photos are typically vertical, but all of my photos were horizontal and I didn’t think this had to be 100 percent authentic or anything.
I actually came away with too many “good” photos, so I made two strips, one for the front and one for the back of the bookmark. I printed the strips together on one piece of white cardstock.
And then trimmed them to look like real photo strips.
I picked out a piece of patterned scrapbook paper I had and cut a piece twice the width of my final bookmark dimensions.
I folded it lengthwise so that the pattern side of the paper would appear on both sides.
Then I assembled the whole thing with a glue stick and let it dry.
I cut a piece of clear laminating film (a.k.a. Con-Tact paper) slightly larger than twice the width of the bookmark.
Then I covered the bookmark with the contact paper and rubbed my fingernail all over to make sure it was good and stuck. They make a burnishing tool for occasions like this, but I will continue to use my fingernail because it works.
Last, I trimmed the off the excess contact paper and I was all done! Happy Father’s Day, Dan!
