With pockets for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Treat, and more (including, ahem, Buffet), choosing a new restaurant to try is as simple as picking a card. I’ll show you how we made our restaurant book using the eco-friendly supplies given to us by Full Circle Crafts, and–best yet–tell you how you can enter a giveaway to win even more Full Circle Crafts supplies: To make our restaurant review log, we used the following supplies:
recycled snap board book (given to us by Full Circle Crafts) liquid watercolors (use any non-toxic variety, or make your own liquid watercolors) eco-friendly acrylic paint (given to us by Full Circle Crafts) recycled chipboard (given to us by Full Circle Crafts) playing cards from an incomplete deck library card pockets (you can also use envelopes, or fold your own library card pockets from stash or vintage papers) natural glue (given to us by Full Circle Crafts) Sharpies, artist’s markers, or any art supplies for embellishment hemp watercolor paper (given to us by Full Circle Crafts)
- Add background embellishments to your book. To give the book some color, I let the kids at it with the acrylics. These eco-friendly acrylics have low or no VOCs, so they’re fine to use indoors on this rainy day, and they dry really quickly, so the kids had the front and back covers and every inside page completely painted by the end of a single day.
- Add pockets. Using watercolors and my special Faber-Castell Pitt pens (I REALLY need to buy them their own set!), the kids decorated each library pocket. The pockets were intended to represent the various categories–Take-Out, Breakfast, etc.–but most of the pockets seem to contain pictures of pizza. And dinosaurs. We glued one pocket to each page using the natural glue. I was prepared to use hot glue or Aleene’s for this, since each pocket will need to hold the weight of several embellished playing cards, but this natural glue is really sticky, and worked for everything in the book. Next »
- Create labels. I used my mad lettering skillz (NOT!) to label each category on the recycled chipboard with a Sharpie, then gave the chipboard to my kids to decorate with liquid watercolors and eyedroppers. The kiddos were thrilled to discover that this recycled chipboard works amazingly well with watercolors; if you’ve ever used watercolors on a coffee filter, you’ll recognize the effect that they were able to achieve here. For the cover labels, the kids painted on their hemp watercolor paper, which, when dried, was plenty sturdy enough for me to tear into strips, write the title on, and glue to the snap book’s cover.
- Write the cards. Using InDesign, my partner created a playing card-sized restaurant info template, on which I recorded each restaurant’s name, the mealtimes that it serves, its address, and its hours. I created spaces to record the date that we ate at each restaurant, what each person had, and our overall verdict, all ready to be written in at the restaurant or later at home. I made 30 cards, to match the number of playing cards in the incomplete deck that I used, but most playing cards are a standard size, so I can easily create more cards later. I printed the cards out on my laser printer, then cut them out and used the natural glue to adhere each card to one of the playing cards. This made them really sturdy, so they can be handled a lot, shoved into and pulled out of their pockets, and perhaps even shuffled, if we’re having exceptional trouble making a pick.
- More decoration? Yes, please! We glued extra painted chipboard and watercolor paper randomly across the pages just to add a little more happy chaos, and yep, some of that watercolor had glitter in it! Our restaurant book is making it really easy to try new local restaurants. With all the restaurant’s info on its card, we don’t have to wonder if a particular restaurant that we want to try is open yet, or if it serves lunch. The cardboard pages of the board book stand up to a lot of abuse, and the fact that it snaps shut lets me easily bring it along on outings, so that we can try a new ice cream place on the fly, if we wish. And I CANNOT emphasize enough how important a fun, interactive book is, especially one that the kids helped make, in convincing them that yes, some place other than the Chinese buffet is an acceptable restaurant choice, too. Strangely enough, there aren’t any Chinese buffets listed on these particular cards. Hmmm….. Come back tomorrow, because not only did Full Circle Crafts give US some fun, eco-friendly supplies to craft with, but they’re going to give two of YOU some fun, eco-friendly supplies, too!
