Friday, April 24, 2009

FRANCE bookmarks for Girl Scouts

Happy Friday everyone! Are you ready for the weekend? I am. This weekend we are going to an annual Polish Festival. It is held at a Church here in the Phoenix area that serves a mostly Polish congregation. They have Polish dancers in traditional costumes and live Polish music, crafts and Polish food. Let me just say that the food it FABULOUS!! My 94 year old (young) uncle is polish and I've invited He and my Aunt to come for the festivities. I know he will enjoy it since he grew up around all that stuff. I hope it brings back many happy memories for him. He is a very young 94 yr old. He is still sharp of mind, and a total crack up! He always has new jokes to tell, and is the king of one-liners. He is the life of the party where ever he goes. Perhaps that is why he stays so young! Well, anyhooo, I am posting today because I really wanted to share a little project I did for my niece Savannah's Brownie troop a couple of weeks ago. The Girl Scouts in our area hold an event annually where all the troops get together in a big hall, and celebrate cultural diversity. Each troop is assigned a country, and they must present info and products from that country. Savannah's troop chose France. they displayed the French Flag over their booth ( made on poster board by the girls) They had their facts table set up with interesting facts about France, i.e., arts, population, national product,etc. as each girl stopped by each "country's" table, their passports were stamped with a little flag sticker for the corresponding country, a craft was made, and food from that country was sampled. Savannah's booth served little cream puffs topped by tiny French flags. So cute! and for their craft, I made these bookmarks. The craft had to be fairly quick, under 5 min, as there were alot of girls and they had to make their rounds at each table. I made the body of the bookmark,( had it all stamped and the top hole punched out) , so when they arrived at our booth all they had to do was thread the tassel through the top hole, adhere the little oval *paris* plaque to the bottom and add the bling! Easy Peasy! They really got into the sparkly rhinestones! I had to limit some of them, as I think they would have covered their entire bookmark with rhinestones! LOL But, they're 8-12 yrs old, so that's to be expected! Little girls love their bling! and some of us *BIG* girls do too! I think they turned out quite well. all the girls seemed to like them and some of the leaders came by and made a bookmark too! Hopefull these will encourage them to do some reading over the summer, Well, .... it's a nice thought , anyway.

The Recipe: I cut some* very vanilla* card stock (SU!) into 2x8 strips, rounded the corners with my corner rounder (SU!) I stamped the images using Ranger Distress Ink in *vintage photo* the Eiffel tower was stamped in black( SU) as I wanted it to stand out as the main image, the stamp set is *Journey to France* from TJ designs (Tweety Jill) I also used the *Carte Postale* set from SU! (ret) for the Fluer de Lis and the Bonjour, and Mon Amie images. I really love that set, too bad they retired it so soon! I stamped the little Flourishes using Copper ink by Color Box. that just gives it a little dimension as it will pick up the light when held at different angles. I used *Stickles* in Bronze on the Eiffel Tower to jazz it up a little, ( remember what I said about the bling!) The little *Paris* oval was stamped on a different piece of vanilla card stock, and punched out using the small oval punch (SU!) I added two little rhinestones to each of the Fluer de Lis to give it some more interest. (on sample.) ( the girls could add more if they wished) The girls glued those on and added the rhinestones, threaded the tassel and Voila! a stylin' new bookmark souvenir of their trip to France! the Troops # is on the back of each bookmark. I made 100 of these little *souvenirs*! It was a fun night! Take care, enjoy the springtime weather, hopefully everybody is finally getting some relief from the cold and snow. It is getting just plain HOT here, But that's Phoenix!

Bye for now,

Heidi

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