I like big books....

I love books and I love a cute bookmark.  I started a tradition with our book club back in 2007 when I brought back bookmarks from the Sydney Opera House for all my book club friends.  Since then, everyone has brought us bookmarks from all of their travels.  So, I've got a really cute collection of bookmarks from India, China, Turkey and even Marfa, Texas.  Since my book club was celebrating it's 6th anniversary, Anita and I wanted to do something small for everyone.  If you remember the totes we made for our 5th anniversary, you'll know Anita is a magician with the silkscreen.  Recently, she dug into her magic hat and pulled out a pretty awesome idea for our 6th anniversary gifts.

I saw a t-shirt online that I wanted to steal the quote from so I basically threatened to hold my breath until Anita came up with an idea on how to incorporate it in our gifts.  It's a good thing she's so crafty because I wouldn't have lasted long, but we'll just keep that between us.

She came up with the idea to make to make some button pins, but that didn't pan out because it required us to buy or rent a machine.  She then discovered that you can make fabric buttons with just a simple cover button kit and refills available at Hancock Fabrics. And suddenly all of my dreams were fulfilled.  Making fabric buttons has sort of been a dream of mine for a while now.  I have weird dreams, I know.  Then, I was stumped as to what we would do with these fabric buttons and she came up with the ingenious idea of a book band.  And that, my friends, is how the bookband was born.  

 

We decided to silkscreen the quote onto some fabric I have in my stash.  I designed the button with the quote and Anita worked her magic with the screen and got it ready for us. You can see the quote here.... "I like big books and I cannot lie."  In case you don't get it, it is a play on Sir Mix-a-lot's song "Baby Got Back."  Cracks. Me. Up.  Needless to say, I had this song in my head for a few weeks.....

 

We originally went with a yellow paint on linen so this pic is from our first couple of trials.  It didn't show up well on the fabric - and linen is not the best fabric to use when silkscreening such a small surface area because the weave is so large - so we ended up going with black ink and another fabric.  It actually looked better that way anyway. 

We cut up all the quotes according to the size specified on the cover button.  Our buttons were going to be 1 1/2", so it was maybe an additional 3/4" of fabric that is required to wrap around the button. 

Our first good button!!!   The kit was easy to use and push the back onto on the front but the "refills" aren't.  We had to coax them with a couple of taps of a hammer.  One thing: The "refills" aren't refills.  They don't require the kit.  I want to write Hancock a letter to tell them to get familiar with what they are selling but I'll let it go this time since the box on the "refills" say 'no extra tools required'. 

Our pile of buttons!!!!  We took those and strung 3/8" elastic thru the back and sewed the edges together to create a loop.  Then, we burned the edges to ensure they wouldn't fray. 

Our book bands!!  This is them in action on my Kindle.  Trust me.  The irony was not lost on us.....

 

And here they are all wrapped up!!  Our fellow book club members loved them.  We figure this will be the beginning of our bookband empire.  :)