A few weeks ago I was talking with another librarian friend of mine when she started to ask me about a book. She stopped and said, “Oh yeah, you’re all about making now, you don’t really do books anymore.”

This caused me to pause. Of course I am still all about books.

But it’s true, I am also about making.

I have always been about books. I have also always been about making, I just used to call it programming.

And I am always looking for ways to get teens thinking about books in our Teen MakerSpace at The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County (OH), which is how we came up with the “Books of Our Heart Button”.

As you may have heard me say, button making has proven to be incredibly popular for us. We have teens that come in every day simply to make buttons. So we are constantly looking for new button making challenges. I also just did a new big order of “maker” books for our Teen MakerSpace, which I try to always look through when they arrive for any great ideas.

Map Art Lab is a part of the Art Lab series from Quarto Books. We have every title in this series in our Teen MakerSpace and this is our most recent addition. Thumbing through the book I stumbled across this page . . .

And my MakerSpace assistant and I thought it would make a great button. In fact, we figured we could make the heart out of thumbprints given the popularity of our recent thumbprint buttons and have the teens add their favorite books instead of their favorite streets.

Supplies:

• Button maker (we use American Button Machines)
• Button making supplies: shell, pin back, mylar sheet
• Plain paper (we used white, but any color would do)
• A heart shaped stencil that will fit within your button size (we made ours)
• Masking tape
• Ink pads
• 2.25 circle hole punch (we use these to cut out our circles)
• Fine tip Sharpie

Process

1. Cut your circle using the circle hole punch.

2. Tear slim strips of masking tape which you will use to make a negative space on your paper. The masking tape will create the negative line spaces where you will write in the names of your favorite books, so be thinking about how many lines you will need and how you want them to look.

3. Using your heart stencil and marker, trace the heart onto your circle.

4. Fill in your heart using your ink pad and your thumbprint.

5. Slowly and carefully remove your masking tape to reveal your negative line space. I went ahead and completed the heart outline with the marker.

6. Where your negative line spaces are, write the names of your favorite books.

7. Decorate as you wish and then make into your button following your button maker instructions.

I love my button so much I also made one with my husband and kids’ names. But more importantly, I was excited to find another way that I could combine books with making to keep our teens thinking about books while having fun making in our Teen MakerSpace.