Notecards for a Mystery Reader

I am winding up my Christmas posts this week before we go out of town for the holidays. If anyone reads this blog regularly you will know that a lot of our projects are intended as gifts for people who love to read. We have made mini book ornaments, dioramas featuring favorite fictional characters like Dr. Watson and even a magnetic Portable Pride and Prejudice.
Everyone in my family reads a lot and we are all absolutely crazy about mystery books.

We all especially hold the classic mysteries dear. Authors like Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett and Wilkie Collins all wrote wonderful mysteries in the 20th century that are a joy to read and reread. Luckily, they were reprinted so many times there is a lot of gorgeous book cover art to be found when you look up these authors. I decided to make note cards this year featuring vintage mystery covers.
Since I am not selling these cards I am not sure where this falls in the copyright infringement department. I obtained images from Google by typing in different book titles and looking at the images that came up. I had specific books I wanted to include so this approach worked for me. You could also type in "vintage mystery covers" and see what happens, or "pulp crime covers." You may even decide you want to do this project but not use mysteries at all. You could really customize these cards for anyone's interests. It could be a collection of notecards featuring famous cookbook covers, romance novels, musical scores or anything you dream up. You will use the same technique regardless. I cut and pasted the images that I found onto a word document. Then I resized them as best as I could so that they were close to 3 1/2 x 5 inches. Some of the covers get really blurry if they need to be enlarged so it is best to go from large to small. That means that when you see an image you like on Google click on it and save it as a large image. Don't save the thumbnail photo. I had my Word document printed at a copy shop from a file because the quality is so excellent and it only costs a few dollars but you also can print it out on your ink jet on regular paper, then cut out the covers.

Materials

• Set of blank notecards. Mine are 3 1/2 x 5 inches
• 12  3 1/2 x 5 images cards. I used mystery book covers.
•  Double stick tape
• Clear tape
• Scissors
• School pocket folder, cut down so the pockets are intact but it measures around 5 1.2 inches tall.
• Optional yarn and brads for closing the packet
• Optional stencils for decorating the front

Steps

1. Use double stick tape to attach the cut out book covers to the front of each notecard.
2. Use tape to attach a piece of yarn to the back of the folder.
3. Put a brad on the front of the folder for the string to wrap around when the folder is closed.
4. Stencil "Top Secret" if you want on the front of the folder.
5. Fill the folder by overlapping 6 cards on each side and inserting the envelopes behind them.