Utah County Mom: Board Books

Lily’s favorite thing to do is to look at pictures of family.  Since not all of our family lives close, I decided to make board books with pictures of everyone and names for her to look at.  This is one of the only things that keeps her consistently quiet during church and entertained in the car.

First, I found board books to use.  You can use any old board books you find at your house or a thrift store.  I decided to purchase blank 5″ x 5″ square board books for this project

here

.  They were super cheap (only $1.30 per book) but there is a minimum purchase requirement of $25.

We have a huge family, so it took 6 books in all.

I designed the pages, cover, and spine in Microsoft Publisher.  I created a custom page size the size of the book and added color, text, and pictures to fill each page.

Since making this project, I have figured out a much easier way to design an adorable template for these books.  Go HERE to check out my suggestion.

Lily’s middle and last name were blurred out in the picture above for privacy reasons.

Then I printed the pages out using the highest quality my printer allowed.  I cut each page to size using my paper cutter, leaving the corners angled instead of rounded like the board book.

 I glued each page on with glue stick, using an old insurance card to smooth each page to the book.  Any card would work, but make sure it’s one you don’t care about as it might get glue on it.

After the glue was dry, I tested the corners to make sure they were secure and added more glue if necessary.  Then I trimmed the corners from the back of each page to match the corners in the book.

 Once the pages were glued in and trimmed, I sprayed them generously with a clear coat of

glossy finishing spray.

  I let each page dry well before I turned the page to spray the next one.  Make sure to spray in a well ventilated area.

 After the inside pages of the books were sprayed, I glued on the binding for each book.  I made each binding 1 inch thicker than the book was.

After the bindings dried, I glued the front and back cover on to each book and trimmed each of the corners.  I sprayed with

finishing spray

generously and let dry.  Then I covered each cover with clear contact paper for extra durability.

Here are 4 of the 6 books I did for my little girl.  She LOVES them.

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