Finished in color, or ready to color
The first choice is whether the bookmark is done when it comes off the printer.
Seven sets come as finished illustrations. Autumn Friends, Coastal Blue, Whimsical Winter Forest, Christmas Tree, Dreamy Pastel Fantasy, Woodland Animal Writable and Vintage Garden Shaped are ready as soon as they're printed, so the only work left is cutting.
Three are coloring books in bookmark form, and they hold far more designs. Cute Animal Coloring Bookmarks has 60 animals in a 58-page book, two bookmarks to a page, each with the animal's name in big bubble letters. Its cover marks it for ages 3 to 8 with an adult helping. Ocean World and Little Space Explorers each have 36 designs, three to a page, in a 17-page line-art PDF. Both of those also include a second PDF with the same 17 pages already colored, which a child can copy or ignore. All three also include blank bookmark outlines for kids to fill with a character of their own.
What's on them
Seasons. Autumn Friends is a cast of animal readers, a fox curled up with a book, an owl on a stack of books, a badger under an umbrella, each with a short reading line at the bottom like "Just one more chapter." Those lines give the set a lot of its personality. Whimsical Winter Forest goes the other way, deep navy and a little strange, with moon faces, birch trunks that have eyes and a deer with lanterns hanging from its antlers. Coastal Blue is a Mediterranean summer in cobalt, olive and lemon yellow: white lanes, a blue door, a fishing boat. Christmas Tree puts one tall tree on each of its 12 bookmarks, and no two are trimmed the same way, from dried orange slices to gingerbread.
Animals. Autumn Friends and Woodland Animal Writable are both woodland readers, but the first is about the picture and the second is about the writing space (more on that below). For kids who want to color animals, Cute Animal Coloring Bookmarks sorts its 60 into six collections: farm, woodland, ocean, jungle, fantasy and tiny animals, and Ocean World covers whales, reef fish, octopus and squid, shells, and a submarine and shipwreck for good measure.
Fantasy and flowers. Dreamy Pastel Fantasy is fifteen soft pink and lavender daydreams, like a whale swimming over rooftops and a village inside a teacup. Vintage Garden Shaped pairs roses, peonies and wisteria with old garden objects, a gate, a key, a birdcage, in blush, burgundy and sage. Little Space Explorers is cartoon space, where the sun grins and a kitten drives a moon buggy.
Size, minis and shaped bookmarks
Almost everything here is the standard 2 x 6 inches. Three sets add minis: Autumn Friends, Coastal Blue and Whimsical Winter Forest each have ten full-size bookmarks plus five at 1.5 x 5 inches. The fall and summer minis keep a single small motif, while the winter minis are full scenes.
Vintage Garden Shaped is the odd one out. Each of its 25 bookmarks follows the outline of its bouquet, and every shape fits within 2 x 6 inches. The PDF sheets print a dotted line around each one to cut along, and the gaps between petals are already filled in, so there are no small windows to cut. It's a scissors project; there are no cut files for an electronic cutting machine.
Borders or edge to edge
This matters more than it sounds once you pick up the scissors.
Autumn Friends and Coastal Blue sit inside a printed ivory or cream border, so a printer that leaves a white margin around the page is no problem. Woodland Animal Writable has a thin printed border of vines and acorns.
Christmas Tree, Dreamy Pastel Fantasy and Whimsical Winter Forest print the art right to the finished edge, and the sheets carry no extra bleed. There's no white edge to hide a wobble, so cut carefully on the trim marks with scissors or a paper cutter.
Bookmarks to write on
Woodland Animal Writable keeps a small reading animal at the bottom of each bookmark and leaves the rest open. Every one of its 12 designs comes twice, once blank for a short message or sketch and once with eight pale lines for a reading list, a favorite quote or a handwritten gift note. Print these on uncoated cardstock and let the ink dry before writing. Skip lamination on any you still want to write on, since ordinary pens won't mark over it.
Cute Animal Coloring Bookmarks has writing pages for kids too. It includes ten pages of animal name practice, with each name in light gray letters to copy and a line to write it again, and ten pages of reward bookmarks with messages like "Great Reader!"
Files and printing
The seven finished sets each include PDF sheets in both US Letter and A4, plus every design as a separate PNG and JPG. The individual images are handy when you only want one favorite. You don't have to print a whole sheet.
The three coloring sets are US Letter PDFs only. On A4 paper, print at Actual Size and center the page rather than using Fit to Page, then check the 1-inch test line near the front before running the rest.
Whatever the set, print at 100% with scaling turned off, or the bookmarks won't come out at their stated measurements. How to print at actual size shows where that setting is. Cardstock gives a bookmark that lasts through a whole book; Which paper to use for printables covers the weights. For full-art sets, run one test sheet first, because printed colors rarely match the screen exactly.