Trash to Great Storytime Art Projects …

This week's Trash to Great Storytime Art Project is a Paper Bag Booklet.

The trash – old paper bags (any size) and the old construction paper that no one will ever use J

The additional supplies –scissors, sewing machine or a needle and thread, crayons/markers and miscellaneous things like foamies, stickers and stamps

I actually got this idea from my mom, who made a few of these last summer when my niece and nephew where in town. I thought it would be a fun project for either a family storytime or a program for older children, in which they could write their own stories or start a scrap book. It is best to use bags without printing on them, but if it's going to be a scrap book type project the printing can be covered up by the stuff pasted into the booklet.

They are pretty easy to make, simply cut rectangles out of the old paper bags and fold them in half. You can have as many pages as you want, but make sure you don't have so many that you can't sew everything together. Then cut out a strip of construction about 1 ½ inches wide and as high as the booklet and fold it in half length wise. Slide the piece of folded construction paper over the folded edge of the old paper bags and with either a sewing machine, or by hand, sew down the strip, and you have a cute little booklet.

If you don't have a sewing machine and don't want to sew them by hand you can always either punch holes ½ inch in from the fold and thread yarn threw to keep everything together, or ask around and see if a co-worker, friend or storytime parent has a sewing machine and would be willing to sew them together for you.

Here are examples of a few things that are in my paper bag booklet, from left to right:

1. The end of a story my niece dictated to me and a picture we drew to go with the story.
2. A picture my niece drew of my dog, I took a picture of the picture and printed it out to put into the booklet.
3. A picture I drew and my niece colored in and added some stickers.

Enjoy!!!