Dress up word-filled books with a DIY kawaii bookmark.

I’VE always loved books. As a child, fairy tales fascinated me and I would spend hours poring over every page, drinking in the details of the accompanying illustrations.

I had a hard time adjusting when I switched to more serious books, which no longer had pictures to guide my imaginings.

Books crammed with words can seem a little intimidating (or boring) to young readers. But here’s what you can do to put some fun into the experience: get your child to make a kawaii (cute) bookmark, based, perhaps, on a character from a current read!

Everyone imagines their heroes and heroines a little differently – expand your child’s creativity by asking him or her to draw out a character based on the author’s description in the book.

The tutorial below shows you how to make a simple storybook pal to mark the pages, using card stock (thick card paper) and coloured ballpoint pens. These pens (RM5 for a set of 10 in Japanese variety store Daiso) are relatively easy to handle, and won’t lead to inky fingers like markers do.

And if your child is like me when I was three – I used to think that reading meant reading aloud, until one day my mum shushed me and said that I was disturbing her reading – then go ahead and make some “sleeping” mascots, like in the tutorial, to get him acquainted with the wonders of quiet reading.

Lee Mei Li gets her crafty inspirations from making ‘amigurumi’, a type of Japanese crochet doll. Meet her woven whimsies at www.amiguruMEI.com.

Kawaii bookmarks

Skill level: Easy
Time required: 10 minutes
Stuff you’ll need: Card stock, coloured ballpoint pens, 8cm-wide circular food tin lid, scissors, pencil and eraser.

1. Use a tin lid to trace a circle (with your pencil) on the card stock.

2. Sketch two “arms” inside the circle – make it simple like this.

3. Sketch two “animal ears” outside the circle.

4.Cut out the piece. Remember to leave the ears intact.

5.Now, very carefully, cut along the lines of the two arms. To neaten the piece, trim off excess card stock from the “body”, right below the arms.

6.Whip out your ballpoint pens and start giving your DIY bookmark a kawaii animal face.

Make a few other cute characters and slip their tiny paws over the pages of your books.

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• Jeph of all trades
• Artful hero
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• Saving the (real) world
• Capital guides
• For your consideration