Laminated Tissue Paper Bookmarks


A couple of weeks ago I made some sun catchers for Valentine's Day using tissue paper and clear contact paper. Which made me think...could I run tissue paper through my laminator? I have one of those inexpensive laminating machines that takes the laminating pouches, so if I could put tissue paper in one of the pouches, I could make more sun catchers, or something else with that fun stained glass effect.


So, I grabbed a couple of laminating pouches and a stack of colored tissue paper.


I started by using a scissors to cut strips of tissue paper of of the ends of the folded stacks of tissue paper. I cut them in strips between a quarter and a half an inch thick.


Then I cut the strips at the folds. I tried to cut them different lengths and slightly different thicknesses. I wanted things to be a bit mismatched.


Then I opened my laminating pouch and started laying the strips of tissue paper onto the sheet. I tried to overlap and angle the tissue paper, but generally kept them all going the same direction. I tried to fill in as much of the sheet as possible while still leaving some gaps for light to shine through.


There were a couple little edges of tissue paper sticking out. I tried to push them in, but a couple still stuck out, and it was just fine (they just got cut off later).


I carefully walked my pouch of tissue paper over to the preheated little old laminator. I stuck it into the machine, fold edge of the pouch first, and ran it through. The tissue paper is so thin that I got a great bond on the first trip through the laminator (sometimes this little old guy needs the pouches to go through a few times to get a good seal).


And it worked! A pretty crisscross of colors! So, off to try it again.


I layered in even more strips this time, trying to jam as many into the pouch as possible while still leaving little gaps.


This one turned out great, too!


After some careful thought, since I had just made some sun catchers, I decided to make some cool bookmarks. The laminated tissue paper is thin, but thick enough to make a great bookmark. After an attempt to cut the lamination film with a rotary cutter and a straight edge, I ended up just using a 6-inch ruler as a template and cutting around it with a scissors. The plastic film is so slick that it was hard to keep the ruler from sliding, which was complicated by the fact that I had to press pretty hard on the rotary cutter to get it to cut well, so it kept cutting crooked lines. The scissors cut the film easily, so using the ruler worked pretty well.


I ended up with a stack of about 15 bookmarks out of those two laminating pouches. You could punch a hole in the top and run some ribbon or embroidery floss through the tops of the bookmarks, but I rather like the simple ones.


I'm so glad the concept worked well, and I can't wait to try it again!

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