If your mum loves to read then this might be the perfect Mother’s Day card idea for her.

I do sort of believe the quote from A Series of Unfortunate Events that says “There are few sights sadder than a ruined book”. (SUCH a great book series, I highly recommend it for reading aloud. I read the whole series to our kids as bedtime stories whilst they were aged between about 6 and 12. They all had the same story at the same time obviously, surely no one has time for 3 separate stories? Even kids who can read enjoy a bedtime story time with younger siblings. But anyway, I digress! ) There are in fact, a whole heap of sights that are MUCH sadder but I do agree that to wantonly destroy a perfectly good book seems wrong. A beat up old book however, that is falling apart, you’ve dropped in the bath or is ruined when you read on the beach because the sun lotion on your hands makes the cover go all weird, is fair game for a book page craft in my eyes. If you don’t have any wrecked books then a local library often has them to give away.

Before Christmas I was all about the book page crafts! I was still playing with an idea that involved stamps on pages of old books back in January hoping to do something for Valentine’s day but I’ve managed to get it to a point where I’m happy to share in time for Mother’s Day.

This idea is easily adapted for a card for any occasion too, just change the sentiment and you’re sorted.

To make these stamped book page Mother’s Day cards you will need:

• Pages from an old book

• Watercolour paints or even watered down acrylic paint

• A paint brush

• A pretty stamp

• Black Ink pad

• A printed or stamped sentiment

• Scraps of card for matting and layering

• A blank card and envelope

I made these cards as squares, to go on a 6” x 6” card blank and some 5” x 5” card blanks but you can change the dimensions to suit yourself.

First trim a page from an old battered book to a square. The exact dimensions will depend on how wide the text is in your book. I like the text to go right across for these cards so I cut a square from a page as long as the text is wide. In this case 9cm (3.5”) square.

Once you have your square cut then give the centre a wash of colour. You can use watercolours as I have here or you can water down some acrylic paint. A watercolour crayon would work too. Just don’t get the paper too too wet as old books can be quite delicate. Leave it to dry completely.

Now stamp an image onto the watercoloured area.

I played with a few stamps that I have, I think all were freebies on the front of papercraft magazines. Some images work better than others on the coloured book print. I don’t think the heart here was very successful. It’s a really pretty stamp but there is just too much detail for it to show up properly. The cake stand is detailed too but just seems to have worked ok. Best advice is to play with what you have and see what works.

You can colour an element of the stamped image if you like, I added a little gold pen detail to the heart tag.

Now all that is left is to arrange the book page element and your sentiment in a pleasing arrangement. You can matt either or both elements onto coloured card. I did a few different layouts that might inspire you for your card making.

Here I played around with separate words cut out. You could have the words higgledy piggely or straight.

If you do pull apart an old book to make a Mother’s Day card you might like some more ideas to use up the rest of the book!

Do you think you know a mum who might like a book page mother’s day card?

I’ll be sharing this project at these link ups