DIY Party Decorations from Book Pages for a Literature Party

Over Christmas my parents hosted their annual "Christmas Cracker". They don't actually call it a Christmas Cracker, that's just what it has come to be known as. They love themes, and this year's theme was "Literature".

Mother bought a couple of poor quality books and asked me to make some decorations, and this is what I made...

Book Page Bunting

This must be one of the easiest and most effective crafts I've ever done. I was inspired by this tutorial from Brooklyn Limestone that I found on pinterest.

Materials: String, unwanted book, sticky tape, string

1. Rip a lot of pages out of a book.

2. Use a blank page to make a template shaped like this... (you may wish to fold this page in half to make it easier

3. Cut out 1 gazillion pages in this shape

4. Go through the book pages and put them in a pile so all the most attractive pages are facing down. Title pages for example can be very pretty so you want that facing outwards once the bunting is hung up.

5.Take your string and start sticking the triangles to it at equal intervals. If you want this to last longer you could fold the top band over to encase the string, and use double-sided sticky tape or glue. But if you're just making it for a party give yourself a break and take the easy option.

6.To avoid tangling the bunting up its easier to make a series of short lengths of bunting as opposed to one long one.

7. HANG UP EVERYWHERE!! 

Note: As you can see I got a bit creative and cut heart shapes into the middle of some of my bunting.

Old Book Christmas Tree

This is quite a festive craft but you could easily adapt it for other occasions.

1. Take a book and rip the cover off.

2. Draw the outline of half a Christmas tree on the first page.

3. Taking a bunch of pages at a time, start cutting out following this outline until all the pages are that shape

4. Flex the spine about a bit so and stand the book up fully open. IT LOOKS SICK!!

To go with the Literature Themed Decorations, my parents arranged some Literature Themed Games!

Firstly they invited everybody to bring a quote from one of their favourite books or poems and we stuck them on the wall. Then we tried to guess which books they came from.

My sister printed off lots of pictures of book covers with the titles removed, to see if we knew which books they were from.

Finally, my dad wrote a quiz about books.

All those activities turned out much funner than you'd expect!