Low Cost Book Laminating with Clear Shelf Liner

Our School is adopting Journeys for our ELA curriculum and it’s amazing! However, the books they’ve given us are flimsy – to say the very least. My kindergartners will bite, digest and eat them before the first day is finished! So, I thought I would come up with a way to laminate some of them to preserve their integrity for at least a while. This book cost less than 50 cents to laminate.

The books I plan to laminate are much smaller and I expect one roll of Clear Shelf Liner will laminate 6 books. That is approximately 17 cents per book. I’m making this a parent volunteer job J

What you need:

Clear Shelf Liner (Dollar Tree has rolls and it is what I used)

Scissors

STEP 1: 

Measure the length of your book by placing it in the middle of the shelf liner. Fold the excess from the bottom and the top toward the middle, dispersing the excess equally. In my book, there was two squares at the bottom and two squares at the top. (The squares refer to the grid on the laminating 

paper itself).

STEP 2:

Fold the paper in half to create a midline.

STEP 3:

Cut a hole up the midline fold parallel with another hole at the top. Use the grid on the laminating paper as a guide. Do not cut past the horizontal fold.

STEP 4:

Place the laminate so that the sheen laminate is facing toward your working surface and the paper backing to the laminate is facing up. Peal off the laminate on the left side of the book. Place your book’s spine in the middle and smooth out the cover of the book on the laminate.

Step 5:

Open up the book, and fold up the laminate from the horizontal fold onto the inside cover. Fold over the excess from the height of the book into the cover. I used my fingernail to smooth out the surface, but you could use a credit card.

Step 6:

Gently peal off the rest of the laminate and repeat on the opposite side. The Shelf liner is forgiving, so you can lift up and correct as needed.

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Copyright Mandy Fyhrie August 2014