Big Book of Boo Boos

Doc McStuffins has only been out a little over a year, but all three of my kids love the show.  So it came as no surprise when Alex and Zach picked it for their birthday party theme this year.  As a mom of three boys and an aunt to all nephews, I saw this as my rare chance to use both pink and glitter for the kids without raising any eyebrows.

The main goody bag item for the party was going to be the Big Book of Boo Boos, where Doc writes down all of her diagnoses.  In the show, it's a five-ringed book with a purple cover sporting a pink glitter heart on the front.  Inside are wide-ruled lined pages and she draws her findings with a crayon.

While I'm all about little details and sticking with the original source, ringed notebooks aren't easy for little kids to navigate, especially ones with large rings that let the pages flop around.  I came up with a rough idea using cereal boxes and notebook paper, but it was going to be a lot of work and I wasn't sure I'd like the results.  Maybe if I had three to make, it would be alright, but never one to make things easy on myself, I was facing the manufacture of 17.

So, I decided to have The Dollar Tree do the hard work and ordered a case of regular size composition notebooks.  They also carry them in the store, but clicking the mouse was all the energy I had one day.  I teamed these with Amazon's 12in by 40ft of purple vinyl, two pages of 12in by 12in chunky pink glitter scrapbooking paper from the local hobby store, and glossy laminating sheets.

If you look at it from a per book basis, each one probably cost less than $2.50.  The notebooks were $1 each, it took about $1.10 worth of vinyl, $0.09 for the shipping label, $0.08 of the glitter paper, and about $0.15 for the laminating sheet.  I didn't include printer ink or a plain piece of printer paper, and of course, if you needed to buy scissors, a cutting mat, or glue, that would make it more.

Essentially you cover the book in vinyl, line the inside of the notebook covers if you like, and attach the glitter heart to the front.  You'll see in the materials picture that I'm using a Silhouette cutting mat mainly because it was the only thing I could find.  Between the sticky surface of that and the vinyl, it was a bit irritating to work with.  Also, if you use a rotary cutter, it'll go right through it, which I found out the hard way, but it still works in the machine at least.

Covering the Books

I initially tried just slapping the notebook on the vinyl and cutting around it with the Exacto knife.  I didn't like how much concentration it took me to get a good edge.  I also briefly toyed with the idea of taking measurements and having my Silhouette machine cut out the covers for me.  Maybe the high end composition notebooks (do those exist?) have even edges, but the ones I had were pretty variable.  One size wasn't even going to fit most, and I'd still have to trim them by hand.

If all of your crafting is squashed into the few hours between when your kids go to bed and when you do, then you probably understand my desire for simple.  I needed to be able to hack at it with some pointy objects and end up with something decent.  Also, don't worry about any little bubbles between the vinyl and the notebook cover.  I tried to press them out and it just made the vinyl wrinkle, plus after sitting overnight, they disappeared on their own.



You will need:

• Composition notebook
• Scissors*
• Exacto Knife*
• Vinyl, 12in wide, purple in my case
• Cutting Mat (mine is 12x24) or Expendable Surface
• Rotary Cutter* (Optional)

*You can use any or only one of these.  I used all three just for speed. Go with what you have.

1. Roll out the vinyl sticky side up across the cutting mat
2. Peel the paper off the back, exposing the stickiness
3. Place the back notebook on the vinyl, about 2in in from the edge with roughly equal amounts of vinyl sticking out above and below.
4. Open the book to the back cover, holding the front cover and pages so they don't touch the vinyl.

5. With your free hand, use the Exacto knife or the rotary cutter to trim off the corners.  It doesn't matter how close or far from the notebook you get as long as you have enough to fold over later.

6. Cut some lines radiating out from both corners with the Exacto knife or scissors.  You can do 4 like I have or 40.  It just depends on how much of a smooth looking curve you want.  I started right next to the edge of the notebook and went out.  The most important part of this is to have one straight line coming off the top and the side (marked in red).  Without those, the whole thing turns out weird.

7. Fold the pieces over onto the notebook.

8. Cut a straight line out from the top and bottom of the cover.  Make sure it's in from the binding enough that it's easy to fold the vinyl over the cover.

9. Fold the three sides in over the cover.
10. Close the notebook and slowly turn the book over onto the vinyl so it's now sticking to the front cover.
11. Trim the vinyl along the long edge of the front cover and repeat steps 5 through 9.

12. Close the notebook and use scissors to trim the top and bottom vinyl tabs.  Cut as close to the notebook as you can.


Lining the Inside Covers

The next part is optional or you could do an easier variation of it.  This is just what I did for ours.

I didn't like the random composition text being visible, like the schedule grid or the conversion table, or the really not straight edges I had folded over, so I wanted to cover all of it.

You could totally do this with some card stock cut to size and hot glue/tape/spray glue.  I was too lazy for all of that and went with full page labels, which are essentially printable stickers. 

The additional plain paper is to make sure the text underneath doesn't show through the sticker part.  Without it, you can still see faint markings unfortunately.

I used the Time for a Check Up and I Feel Better song lyrics since they were the most pertinent to the Big Book of Boo Boos.  The main graphic is from TheWondersofDisney.com. The bandaids are from Family.go.com by Disney.  The rest of the graphics were Google searches for ears, eyes, hearts, and giggling.

You will need:

• Full sheet white shipping labels (Avery was the brand I used)
• Regular printer paper
• Printer
• My template for the Silhouette or a version to cut out by hand

1. Print out your template of choice using your highest photo quality setting.  If you are cutting it out by hand, the picture is twice as big as a normal page, so you might need to resize it.  The grey line is supposed to be 7in by 9in.
2. Rerun it through your Silhouette machine (Speed 3, Thickness 14, Blade 3) or cut it by hand along the grey line.
3. Cut down a sheet of printer paper so it covers the inside cover text.  This can be a really rough hack job as long as the final product is less than 7in by 9in and it covers the text.
4. Place the paper over the inside cover text, peel off the back of the sticker, and place the sticker over the paper, as centered on the cover as you can make it.

You can do a plain, unprinted version of this for the back cover, or just leave it crappy looking like I did.  The 4yr olds at the party weren't going to care.


Glittery Heart


I feel like I should give a warning about this part of the process.  The craft store had normal glitter paper and this really chunky, large pieces of glitter-type paper.  I chose the second because it looked the most like the show.

The glitter gets everywhere and is a mess.  I even blew canned air through my Silhouette at one point because it was sticking to everything.  Also, even on the highest settings for thickness and material and using the Double cut setting, my Silhouette wouldn't cut all the way through.  It did give me a good template to cut it out by hand, though.

After the mess I had on my hands, I decided laminating the whole thing would save other families from the cleanup I had.  This step is optional if you don't like the look or don't have the equipment, though.

For the glue, I went with the E-6000 because I didn't have the time or energy to try out others and see if they would work.  I'm pretty sure hot glue would hold the heart on temporarily but not long term since it's plastic on plastic.  The only other thing I had was a glue stick.  hehe

You will need:

• Glitter paper, 12in by 12in (12 hearts fit per page)
• My Silhouette template or one to cut it out by hand
• Exacto knife or scissors
• Laminator and laminating sheets
• E-6000 Glue

1a. For a Silhouette: Run the paper through your machine.  Use speed 3, thickness 33, and blade 10.  When it's done, finish them by hand.
1b.  By hand: Print out two copies of the template.  Trim one so all 12 hearts fit on the glitter sheet.  The hearts should be 2.5in by 3in.  Tape it to the backside of the glitter paper and cut out the hearts.
2. Optional - Laminate the hearts.  Cut them out beyond the bubble that forms around it.  If you cut within the bubble, the heart won't actually be sealed and the glitter will get out.  I just eyeballed it, as you can see.
3. Add glue to the heart and stick it to the notebook.  Let it set overnight.


These seemed to be a big hit at the party, teamed up with a basic 8 pack of crayons.

Disgnosis?  Mommy has an ear infection :(

The next post will cover all of the other things I made for the party, including center pieces, check up sheets, and a little clinic.