So now that I’ve turned our little house into a library that would have any librarian salivating, I began to wonder how we would ever keep track of all our books. Books should be shared and I think its a lovely idea for children to swap books with their friends or bring them into creche or school for story time (which is Mr Moo’s favourite thing to do at the minute). But how do you keep track of all those favourite stories?
I’m not quite controlling enough to implement any type of formal lending system to record who we lend each book to (not sure how Mr Moo’s friends would respond to receiving overdue notices!) but I would like to make sure that if one of our books goes astray and someone finds it, they will know that its ours and send it on its way home to us.
So this week I decided to buy a few bookplates for the babas. Bookplates are such a lovely old fashioned tradition and are a fantastic way to personalise a book. There are plenty of different types to chose from but I wanted something that wasn’t too formal (some of the ‘Ex Libris’ versions were a little too grown up for books which, in some cases, only have about five or six words on each page!) and also something that came already personalised.
In the end, I opted for personalised bookplates from a lovely Etsy shop called Oiseaux:
I got the Vintage Blue Bird one for Lollipop:
and the Animal Band one for Mr Moo.
They are so gorgeous, I really love the vintage feel of these two designs. These particular bookplates need to be glued on but you can get ones that are adhesive-backed (so they are just like stickers). You can even get personalised rubber stamps.
There’s a bookplate out there to suit everyone’s taste and pocket so get looking. Here are a few to get you started:
No more lost books……
