American Girl Library Cards & Books
I'm not going to lie, I love American Girl. The AG activities I do are as much for me as they are for the little girls. Generally I try to keep the activities suitable for both boys and girls, but sometimes I just can't help myself.
I'd already done my American Girl Doll Hats for the Kentucky Derby activity, and was trying to wait a while before I did another. I decided on decorating matching masks for Halloween. While planning that, I stumbled upon these adorable American Girl-sized book printables from americangirlideas.com (which, btw, is an awesome website).
Books They have printables for Dr. Seuss books, Nancy Drew books, Harry Potter books, The Hunger Games books, Golden books, encyclopedias, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (which I am saving for later!).
Another good option, from the online magazine Doll Mag, are these cute fairy tale books, also a free printable.
Now these wouldn't be hard to make, it's just a matter of scanning (or finding the book image online) and resizing. But the work is already done for you with the printables. All I had to was print them out on some cardstock, cut and fold them, and hot glue some appropriately-sized paper into the spine. And they look fabulous!
Library Cards Once I had some books, it occurred to me that the dolls would need a library card to take books from the library. So I scanned an old library card (front and back), and resized it to 0.807"H x 1.28"W. The hardest part for me was getting the front and back just right when I printed it on cardstock. Although a work-around for that would be to print each side on a separate page and then glue them together. Which I didn't do, but it sounds like not a bad idea. Anyway, once I had it looking good, I laminated the miniature library card with packing tape (much easier for this small size than fighting with our gigantic old-school laminator), and voilà!
Now, the library cards could be a little smaller. But I liked the size I did because they are small enough to work without being so small they would easily get lost.
These were easy to do and the girls (and some mothers!) were thrilled with them. I had the books and cards displayed on a table during our Halloween Mask decorating activity. The girls could take a card and choose a book to take home. And, I didn't think about it until afterwards, but I wish I had displayed the actual book with the doll version so they could take home both!
**I later reused the library cards and books as ornaments for my mini Christmas tree.**