Cassie's Pen Pals

An FB stands for Friendship Book. When I first received one of these, I had the wrong idea and totally messed it up. Also, there were abbreviations and such in the book and I didn't know what they meant and ended up writing to people who didn't want to be written to! I hate abbreviations....I'd rather just say what I want to say, but the abbreviations are important. So, if you're like I was and was clueless, or want to start making your own friendship books, read on and I'll clue you in!

A friendship book is a tiny booklet that gets filled with names and addresses and passed on all over the world, changing hands one by one. A friendship book could take a year or more to circulate and get back to the owner! They usually consist of a cover with some sort of picture, either handmade or cut out of something, and 4 to 6 pages. Remember, the friendship book has to fit easily in an envelope, so expect to be doing some cutting. Also, keep in mind that different postal services have different weight restrictions when it comes to a standard letter, so unless you're a "heavy swapper" and don't mind mailing bulks of FB's and paying the extra postage, you don't want to make the book to thick either.

The idea is someone will receive the FB, add their info, scan through the book to see if there is anyone they can/want to write to, then pass it on to one of their own pen pals to do the same. Then, when the book get's full, the FB will be returned to the person it was made for, or the "owner". The owner will then get the pleasure of seeing all the countries their book has been and they have a ton of new pen pals to write to!

There are unspoken rules or "FB etiquette" you'll want to keep in mind, which you can find here.

How do you make an FB you ask?

First off, are you making Friendship books for someone, or for yourself?

FOR SOMEONE: Either on the cover or inside the cover, you'll want write "For" and state who you're making it for, their address, the year they were born, and if you know a couple little tidbits about them, such as what they collect, their hobbies, and also a couple abbreviations to tell future receipients what that person wants, and you'll find these abbreviations here. You don't want to write too much because you want to cram as many people in the book as possible, but you want to write enough to grab a person's attention.

Then, underneath their information, you'll do the same with your info, but you'll put "By" instead of "For".

FOR MYSELF: You'll follow the same instructions as above, but you'll just write your name, address, and tidbits once and title it "For and By"

I'll quickly share with you how I make my FB's. I take an index card and a cute sheet of scrapbook paper or cardstock and cut out 2 rectangles just slightly larger than the index card. I then place 5 index cards between the two sheets I just made and staple them together along one of the long edges 3 times, as close to the edge as I can so there is more room to write. Staple them so that the print or decorates sides of the scrapbook paper are facing out. If the scrapbook paper isn't fancy enough, I decorate it with stickers and/or smaller pieces of scrapbook paper until I'm satisfied.

Remember, this will be passing hands quite a bit and it will be a surprise for who you're making it for, so you want it to be durable and nicely-made, so put your heart into it! You can make very nice FB's at a very low cost. You can buy 12x12 scrapbook pages for a quarter each and get enough pieces out of it to make 4 or 5 FB's, and a pack of 100 index cards are only a $1.00, sometimes less. So don't think you have to be wealthy to make very nice FB's!