Home Made Personalised Fairy Book (with free story)

Over the last few days Miss 3 and I have been enjoying making our own book together. The story is one I made up on request about a week ago, and then refined as she requested it a few more times. It's nothing fancy, but it suits my little want-to-be fairy. In fact Miss 3 came up with the book title and main theme of the book herself.

Originally I had plans of writing it out and drawing the pictures myself and then letting her paint in water colours on the pictures. But Miss 3 really wanted to write her own name into the right spots, and draw the pictures herself, which made it a lovely shared project.

I'll share the words here in case anyone else would like to make it, but isn't too keen on inventing a story themselves.

I took 5 pieces of paper, and folded them all in half to make a book shape (with 10 pages). Keeping the pages folded together (but not stapling them yet, so painting would be easier), I wrote the text on the left page, and Miss 3 drew on the right page. I added some borders for fun, and after painting and drying, stapled the finished book together. As a last step I covered the book in plastic contact, just to make it last a little longer.

Here's the text, just replace the blanks with your own little fairy's name:

When ... Wanted To Fly 

Page 1

Once upon a time, there was a little girl called .... . More than anything in the world ... wanted to fly.

Page 2

Every day she put on her wings and jumped into the air as high as she could. But every day she would land *plof* back on the ground.

Page 3

One night, when all was dark and quiet, and everybody in the house was asleep, ... opened her eyes and saw a light shining beside her bed.

Page 4

When she looked closer she saw it wasn't just a light, it was a fairy!

"Hello!" said the fairy, "I'm your special wish fairy and I can grant you one wish for whatever you want."

Page 5

... didn't even have to think about it. She knew right away what she wanted most of all.

"I'd like to fly." she said.

Page 6

The fairy reached into her pocket and took out a handful of magic fairy flying dust. She sprinkled the dust all over ... from her nose to her toes.

 Page 7

Then the fairy took ...'s hand and together they flew out the window! They flew high up into the sky. Below her, ... could see all the tiny houses and the tiny streets with their tiny street lights.

Page 8

They flew around until it was very late. Then it was time to go home. They flew back to ...'s house, to ...'s room, and to ...'s bed.

Page 9

As ... lay in bed, the fairy tucked her in and gave her a tiny fairy kiss on the tip of her nose.

... fell asleep with a big smile on her face.

The End

Bottle Cap Stamps

I once saw an idea to stick foam stickers on bottle caps to make your own stamps. We didn't have any foam stickers left, but we did have the empty sheet that a set of foam stickers came on, so the whole family spent a happy morning chopping it up and sticking it in different shapes on bottle caps and then stamping with them. 

Speaking of bottle caps, I have a big teapot filled with lids which are used for everything from counting and sorting games, wheels on cardboard box cars, buttons on things that 3 year olds think need buttons, and even once as sushi on our very own sushi train. A wonderful versatile and free toy!

Water Colours and Ink

I've seen finished pictures like this before, but never quite knew how it was done. But a special birthday present was needed and so I thought it was time to give it a go.

I bought a permanent marker with a 1mm tip for the drawing, although Miss 3 pressed so hard with it, I could have chosen one with an even finer tip. I used some good quality heavy paper, cut it to size, and drew the border on. Then I gave the kids instructions to draw inside the border, and then to paint every bit of white inside the border.

For the paint I used watered down water colours. I could have perhaps made them less watery and achieved brighter colours. It was important to teach the kids to wipe the excess water out of the brush. I did want the colours to run together a little, but not with whole puddles on the paper.

Initially I tried to keep it to just primary colours (used for the bottom picture) but Mr 4 badly wanted green for the top picture.

I asked Miss 3 to draw her picture in lead pencil first (to make sure it was an interesting picture from an adult's perspective, not just a big scribble), and I had planned on drawing over her lines with the pen myself. Of course, being a very independent crafter, she ended up doing the pen herself. So in retrospect it probably would have been better to skip the pencil step.

Mr 4 wasn't in an arty mood and took a bit of convincing to get going, so I didn't push the point when he decided to only paint over his drawing rather than everything inside the border. Instead I let that be his artistic choice.