Valentine Paper Bag Books

We're seriously obsessed with Valentine crafts this year! Today we made super easy paper bag books and filled them with little love notes :)

If you have never made a paper bag book you've got to try it and they can be used for scrapbooking, homeschool projects, personalized for special gifts like our Valentine's book and so much more. Basically all you need is standard paper bag lunch bags and a stapler. After that it's up to you as to how fancy or simple you want to make them.



We took 3 paper bags, stacked them all on top of each other with the open ends all at the same end and then folded them in half like one giant paper from top to bottom creating a little booklet. To secure them together I used my stapler and put 3 staples parallel to the fold down the length of the book.



I really cheated for the front of the book *grin*. The pretty red heart paper that it is covered with is actually a napkin! We picked them up at the dollar store for our upcoming Valentine's party and I opened one fully and cut off a square, gluing it on for the background. Worked out fabulously layered with the little red & white heart for the title of the book!!!

Gotta love cheap crafting *wink*.

Making heart templates using one of our cookie cutters we traced 5 hearts in white cardstock and 5 hearts in the red cardstock. I made sure to cut the red heart out about a 1/4 of an inch larger than the tracing line so that it would create a nice color contrast behind the white heart.

We glued in each of the layered hearts only on the left hand side of each set of open pages so that it created fun little spaces to draw happy pictures :)

A paper bag book made with 3 bags will create 3 little pockets on the edge of your book for hiding little notes or trinkets inside. Since ours is a Valentine booklet we decided to use the little pockets for love notes *grin*. Taking a sheet of white cardstock I cut it up into 3.5" x 4" rectangles and then we stapled on bright colored ribbons to the narrow end of the rectangle creating a little pull tab for our notes.

I just love how cute it turned out with the staggered ribbons hanging out the side of the book. And if I think it's cute then you know my 6 year old is over the moon with how it's coming together! LOL

The final touches were for her to actually write her little love notes to be tucked inside :) I helped her by writing down the sentences she wanted to write and then she copied them herself onto the card stock.

You'll have to wait to see her finished drawings on the little heart frames inside as they are 'top secret' and mama is not allowed to see them until Valentine's Day *grin*. Have fun making a little booklet of your own!

~ Rosina