“The Golden Ship” Paper Children’s Storybook

Awhile after I had made Margaret’s Butterflies and The Popcorn Farmer storybooks, some of my nieces and nephews wanted a paper children’s storybook featuring themselves. Well, of course, I’ll make them a book featuring them as the main characters!

So we started planning our story. The kids decided we were all pirates that searched for treasures and fought sharks. Obviously. We came up with hilarious pirate names: I am Captain Pink Beard, then there’s “Shark-Attack Sue,” “Two-Eyed Jack” who wore an eye patch (haaa), “Sharkbait” who has a pegleg, and “Horseshoe Harry” the good luck charm. The story is based on a game we play whenever we are together.

It was so fun to plan and put this book together. It was definitely more intense than the last two books I made! A lot more cutting! And a whole lot more glitter! Yaaas!

The Story

Some fun facts about the book:

• It took so long to write the actual story! I love rhyming books and so I wanted this book to rhyme. Turns out it’s harder to do than it seems!
• The waves are all glitter cardstock. I cut over 60 waves for this book. Whew. The waves were then inked along the edge with a darker blue ink to give them some depth.
• The planks on the ship were all individually cut, inked, and glued in place. Easily the most time-consuming part! I even added little nail marks. Yes, it’s okay to roll your eyes.
• I had to design the railing along the edge of the ship. It was a bit tricky to do the angled one so the ship had depth, like on page 1.
• My favorite page is when the shark is trying to take a bite of Sharkbait. I think it’s such a funny page. I used the trace feature in the Silhouette Design Studio to create the shark.
• The sunset on the last page is all inked in. I wish the shimmery ink translated better in the photos. The original is quite pretty.
• Since this was such an imaginary story, I felt like I could go crazy with the gold foil, glitter, shimmer, and sparkle. Including the Pink Glitter Beard. 😂😂

Supplies Used:

• Silhouette Cameo
• Silhouette Design Studio, Business Edition
• Silhouette Design Store shapes
• Paper background: Kraft paper
• Glitter cardstock: DCWV Glitter pack
• Adhesive: Scotch ATG (looove it!)
• Fiskers 12″ Rotary Paper Trimmer
• Tsukineko Inks
• Tim Holz Distress Inks
• Stampers Anonymous Rays Layered Stencil (used on the sunset page)
• Pen: Sharpie Black Pen
• Stickles Glitter Glue
• Similar 8×8″ Scrapbook Album
• Glossy Accents Dimensional Adhesive
• Heidi Swapp Gold Foil Flakes
• My printer: HP 8600Pro
• The font used for the text: Traveling Typewriter

The kids looove their story and we regularly play their special game and talk about the story often. I can’t wait till the rest of my nieces and nephew are a little older so I can make a special paper children’s storybook just for them.

Do you have a fun, special game or tradition in your family? How have you documented and recorded it?