Recycled Book Bunting

It's fair to say that I am not crazy about decorating in the library. In fact, I'm pretty much anti-decorating. At the very least it costs time, then oftentimes you add in craft supplies or purchased decorations, and pretty soon you have something else in the library that'll collect dust and/or look dated when you forget to take it down in time. I'd much rather put my time and effort into appealing materials displays than decorating.

But.

You know those uber-popular kids books that are so heavy their bindings break much too quickly? Think Star Wars character guides and Disney storybook collections. They always have a high damage rate, as the many thick pages stress the binding. I've been replacing a lot of these titles recently, but instead of just withdrawing and recycling the pages of the fallen-apart copies, I saved them.

And I made decorations for the library.

Recycled Book Bunting in all its colorful, draped glory!

I know! Me! Decorations!

A close-up of the bunting.

I made a triangle template out of cardstock and cut out recognizable characters from the pages of these books: Mickey Mouse, Nemo, Mulan, Bambi, C-3PO, Yoda, Princess Leia, etc. I also made triangles out of bright blue and green, our library's colors, and strung all the little flags up on some purple string to make bunting. Our maintenance staffer hung them Monday morning, and I must say I'm pleased with the results.

So, despite my being someone who generally abhors decorating, apparently I think it's a grand idea when it repurposes illustrated books that have met an untimely demise. By turning the recognizable illustrations into colorful bunting, we're getting more bang for our buck out of these titles.

And now I'll go back to my general "our decor is fine how it is" M.O.