DIY Bookmark Tutorial

Hello everyone!

We both love having a variety of bookmarks, and we wanted to make a couple more and show you how we made them. We hope you enjoy!

Teacup Bookmark – by Amelia

Materials:

• A ruler 
• A paint palette 
• Scissors 
• A piece of cardstock or thick watercolor paper
• Two colors of watercolor paint (I used red and blue)
• Water
• A smaller flat paintbrush
• A pencil 
• A fine-liner or felt tip pen
• Washi tape (optional)

1. Cut out a 2 1/4″ x 6 1/2″ piece of cardstock or watercolor paper. The bookmark can be customized to whatever size you would like.

2. Next draw the teacup about 3/4 of an inch from the end of the cardstock. When drawing the teacup, start with a very elongated oval for the rim and inside of the cup. Next, draw a half-circle shape for the body. Add a handle by drawing an ear-like shape on the side. You can add a heart to the cup like I did, or add any design you would like!

3. Then use your pen to trace around your lines. 

4. Next, add a small amount of each color of paint to your palette and add lots of water to the colors to make them very diluted and watered-down.

5. To make sure you have very little paint on your brush, dip your brush into the paint and press each side of the brush on the palette to squeeze the paint out. 

6. If you would like, you can paint some blue into your teacup to make it look full.

7. Start making your steam by carefully painting a swirl of blue paint about 1/4″ above your cup. You want to start with a thin line and slowly make the swirl wider as you go. I went back and widened my lines because I wasn’t able to get them thick enough with one brush stroke.

8. Next, start painting with your red paint (which will look pink if you added enough water) and continue the swirl. Make sure you overlap a little bit with the blue to make a smoother gradient. You want to paint very thin lines at the top so that it looks like the steam has faded away.

9. You can continue going over the spot where the paints join together with both colors to soften the line between them. Use very little paint for this so the colors stay consistent in tone. At one point I used only clean water to soften the lines.

10. Next, add the speckles of paint. To flick the paint, get a little paint on your brush and place your brush close to the area you would like the paint to go. Then take your finger and gently flick the brush by pulling back on the bristles with your finger and letting them go. Do this until you have the desired amount of speckled paint on your bookmark. Make sure to cover your teacup drawing with a piece of paper to protect it from the paint flecks. I would recommend practicing flicking the paint on a separate sheet of paper before going in on your final product. It can be tricky to get the paint to splatter where you would like, but if you go close enough to your bookmark, you should be able to get some control.

11. If you would like, you can add some washi tape to the corners of your bookmark. You could also round the corners of your bookmark or cut other designs on the edges for a more detailed look.

Torn Pages Bookmark – by Mattie Grace

Materials:

• Cardstock or watercolor paper
• Scissors
• Two colors of watercolor paint (I used blue and red. Blue will be the main color, and red will be the accent color)
• Paint palette
• One large paintbrush
• One medium paintbrush
• Water
• A piece of book paper (there is a link at the bottom for a free PDF print out we made if you would like to use it)
• A glue stick
• Pencil (optional)
• A marker, like a sharpie or other felt tip pen (optional)

1. Begin by cutting out a 6 1/2 x 2 1/4 inch piece of cardstock or watercolor paper (or whatever size you want your bookmark to be).

2. Tear a few pieces from your book page. You want them to be different shapes and sizes, but on average the pieces should be around 1 1/2 inches. I personally did not like the look of the margins or paragraph breaks, so I tried to tear the pieces so that there were only words on the paper and no blank spaces.

3. Arrange your pieces on the bookmark so that there is no cardstock showing. I like to do only a few pieces at a time so that it is easier to fit them together.

4. Remove the paper from the cardstock and begin gluing down the pieces. For a more interesting look, I tried to turn all of the pieces so that the words were going in different directions.

5. Continue tearing and gluing until you have covered the whole bookmark.

6. Once the glue is dry, flip the bookmark over so that you can see the difference between the cardstock and the book paper, and cut off the excess paper.

7. Time for painting! Depending on how dark your paint is, you are going to want to add water to it until it is very diluted. My paint was pretty dark, so I added a lot of water. Using the large paintbrush, you will want to start with a very thin layer of paint so that it can dry quickly. You also want to paint quite patchily, skipping some places and adding more paint to others. This will make it look more “ink-stained”.

8. Next, we will add another layer of blue, but this time it will be darker, and only in a few places. I mostly did the edges of the tears and in the corners.

9. Now for the accent color. I used red (which turns purple on the blue) and the medium-sized paintbrush. Again, this was mostly on the edges of the tears and it was also very diluted. I continued layering the blue and the red, making certain parts darker until I was happy with the result.

10. Once the paint is dry, you can use a marker to write something on it, like a word or quote, or leave it blank like I did.

We hope you enjoyed our tutorial! If you make one of these bookmarks, we would love to see it! You can use the “tries” feature on Pinterest to add a photo to our pin.

Here is the PDF download. We wrote out Psalm 51, 1 Corinthians 13, and John 3:16-21 without the verse numbers so that it would look more like a book page.

Thank you for reading!
– Amelia and Mattie Grace