Rainbow...DIY I Spy Books

I can't believe this is our last tutorial post for the series!

What better way to go out than with Rainbow!

Today I am going to share a colorful project to make FOR your kids to keep them busy during all your summer travels:

It's a ton of fun to make with and around the kids too.

You just don't want them to help TOO much, so that the book is still somewhat of a surprise and will remain novel enough to keep their attention later.

We prepped our white kid table and set it against our white wall. Posterboard would work well also.

Then we pulled out almost every toy we own and set up fun towers, scenes, and messes with them.

I tried to make sure every picture had a theme. And the kids just loved having every toy out at once {and me being okay with it! :) Ha!}

Once I was done with a picture they would carry the toys off to the other side of the room to go play.

Before creating a new picture or scene, I pulled aside a few toys and took pictures of them for the page that lists the toys they need to search for.

I made a collage of those "to find" items in picasa {well for most of the pictures} and added text in picasa as well.

Then I printed all my collages and pictures up.

And quickly slid them into these little $1 photo albums from Walmart:

Easy peasy...

To make them look more polished, I made these "cover pages" for the front of the books in picnik. The cover opening is larger than 4x6 so I just taped my picture on top of the existing cover that comes with the book.

Here they are all filled up...

With still some room to grow.

I thought it would be fun to put word searches back here, family photos, tic-tac-toe grids - and get dry erase markers to use with them. Lots of possibilities...

These pages are great for a non-reader...

And here are some I made for Owen who can read...

We have actually been using these for Church too. I thought they would lose interest once they had found all the items, but they still love them.

Well...Owen does more than Reid but I'll count that as a success!

I think seeing their own toys as apart of the book is really cool for them.

 Don't you love this face? So focused. :)

I can't wait to use them for our road trip coming up!

Thank you so much for reading and following along with this series.

We are going to wrap up the Color My Summer contest this week. Remember, you have just until tomorrow at 8 PM to get your entries in.

And be sure to stop by Kojodesigns for a great 
ROY G BIV project from Aesthetic Nest!

Edited to add: I have had several requests for my images. I am not sharing my I Spy book images right now. I feel like the fun of the project is found in taking pictures of your own toys and belongings, thus creating a memory keepsake as well as a fun "toy" for your kids.

Tips for taking your own pictures:

- Consider buying some white poster board to serve as background to your pictures.
- Take your pictures by a bright window so you can use natural light.
- Don't forget to take individual pictures of the objects you want your child to find in the larger/whole picture. Picasa is a free, easy program to use to make photo collages of those "to find" objects.