the traveling alphabet

A couple of weeks ago, I was picking up craft supplies to help the little kids make a Father’s Day book, when I remembered that dry-erase markers work on plastic page protectors. It seemed like a mini $1.99 album might be just the thing a little person could use for practicing his or her letters. It was a total ah-ha moment. You know, the kind of moment where you are so proud of yourself for thinking of something magical and life altering and everyone else just nods their heads politely like, “Of course you can make an alphabet book from a photo album. I did that last week. We’ve moved on to carving marble.”

In my craft-epiphany mindset, I decided that the best way to proceed would be to make my own alphabet cards to insert in the album pages. Don’t go telling me that there are some really cute printable cards on Etsy. I’m sure there are. I’ll bet there are even some cards made for scrapbooking that would be a perfect equivalent for 80¢. I’ll tell you what is cool about my pages. I stayed up until one in the morning playing with Illustrator to make them. It was like a college all-nighter all over again except without the all-nighter or the 8:00 AM class and I was working on something that I actually wanted to do. When I (I’ll admit) proudly showed one of my teenagers what I had created, he said, “Couldn’t you have just printed those off the internet somewhere?” Death glare, people. Death glare.

Yes, in fact, you can print them off the internet. You, my friend, can pull my stellar alphabet cards off of the internet and make yourself one heck of a cute, cheap, alphabet book.

Here’s how you do it. Run out and get yourself a cheapy 4x6 photo album and some dry-erase markers. Now print each page and cut the cards out along the dotted lines. Your littles can put the cards in order and slip them into the album. They can even decorate a cover to personalize their book. This is the perfect little book for the car or the restaurant or quiet time at the kitchen table. I sure hope your littles like it as much as mine do!