Book Themed Baby Shower

It was my pleasure to have recently opened the doors of our home for my lovely sister-in-law's baby shower. She loves to read and so it was only natural to make her shower a book themed shower.

The actual hostess (also her childhood friend) is from out of town, so I provided the local home and some of the decor while she made the invites, co-ordinated the food, games and added her touch to the decorations on the day of. It was a great collaboration! 

During the last few weeks I have had some fun creating some book themed decorations. If you have been following me instagram you've seen some of these pictures already but if you haven't, here are a few pictures and details about what I created for the baby shower.

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The book mobiles I saw long time ago on Etsy and had always wanted to make one but never had an excuse to do so. I purchased three books for $8 from the local thrift store to make these. It's easy to figure out how to make these by just looking at it but there are tutorials out there that you can reference.

Interesting fact: I used only about two chapters from each book to make them.

The paper balls, also known as Japanese Kusudama, were created using the pages that were left over from making the above mobiles.

These looks fabulous and are quite easy to make, however, they do take quite some time if you are planning to make more than one (I made seven). I used this tutorial to learn how to make them and this image as my inspiration.

Interesting facts: 
- Each petal is made from a square paper folded 10 times.  
- Each flower is made of 5 petals.
- Each ball is made of 12 flowers.
- That means there are 600 folds per ball.

Since there were going to be some young children at the baby shower, I wanted something they could play with that was still book related.

I purchased small and jumbo polka dotted pinwheels from the dollar store. I took them apart and used the original pinwheels as a stencil. Using the left over pages from the above two projects, I simply traced the pinwheel onto the pages, cut them out and put them back together. Easy!

Interesting facts:
- There are DIY kits in craft stores that included the dowels, stencils, instruction that range from $15 to $20.
- I made 20 small ones for $5 and 3 jumbos for $3
- Each one, large or small, took 5 minutes to make over.

Believe it or not, after the above three projects, I still had pages left over. So I cut every single page that was left into triangles using my paper cutter. I then I hot glued them onto some twine and voila....
I had book themed bunting banners.

Interesting facts:
- The banners were in two sizes (largest and smallest pages were left)
- Together they were about 40 feet in total length.

Other items included paper straws in theme colours and page styled treat bags from Omiyage.  

Pom pom balls, honeycomb balls, paper lanterns and balloons pretty much finished off the look. 

The day of was great, the house looked great, the food was great, the company was great and my sister-in-law was truly showered in love and gifts for her first baby to be! I certainly enjoyed myself, the food and the sangria!

It was fun making all these items and I appreciate all the wonderful comments while my creations were in the works. I think what was best about the process was that the 4 projects (mobiles, balls, pinwheels and banner) were all made by the three books I purchased for $8. I think that is pretty good investment and I think it all turned out really well. What do you think?