MINI BOOK WITH SEWN SPINE

 I usually fold my little books or attach the pages with rings or ties, but I have branched out a little with this book which has a sewn spine.

I made three signatures (sheets of paper folded and stacked) and sewed them together.  You can find any number of examples of how to do this on line, but basically, starting on the outside of the folded stack,  I just made three holes went in at the middle, then out on one side, back in on the other side, out again through the middle and then tied of the threads.

I used some lilac handmade paper that I have had for ages but for which I've never quite found a use.  I used quilting thread, passed through bees wax to do the actual sewing, and pre-pierced the holes using an awl.  If your stack is too thick to go through is one go, make a template with the position of the holes marked so that you can do a few sheets at a time, but still get the holes in the right place.

The cover was made with two pieces of packing card slightly larger than the pages, with a third piece placed between with a couple of mm between, for the spine.  (I just measured the height of the sewn signatures to work out how wide to make this.  After cutting a piece of darker and thicker lavender handmade paper, about 1cm larger than the three pieces together, I applied double sided tape to the edges of the card pieces and centred them on the cover.  After mitring the corners, I put some more double-sided tape on the edges and stuck them down.

Next up I just checked everything for size, and then stuck the front page of the inner pages to the inner edge of the front cover, and repeated the same with the back page and the back cover.

I probably should have re en-forced the spine with masking or cloth tape but as the cover paper was strong, and the book quite small I didn't bother, and I think it will all stay together OK....time will tell.

Excuse my gardening fingers but I thought I'd include my hand to give you a sense of scale.  Rather than stick to any pre-determined measurement I simply used the size of the paper as a guide.

Clearly if you wanted you could easily add extra decoration to the front, which I may well do once I decide how to use the book.

ACCORDION FOLDED SEWING KIT

Closed Sewing Kit

Open Sewing Kit

I have lots and lots of paper.  I am not complaining about this fortunate state of affairs, but every now and then I do feel that perhaps I should actually use some of it.

As I seemed to be forever borrowing sewing needles from the ladies at work, these little kits seemed appropriate.

I just folded a long strip of textured white card three times (to make four panels) - up then down then up again to make an accordion.

I added paper to the back panels, securing a ribbon under the end one (which becomes the front of the book) so that it can be tied around the book to keep it closed.

On the other side I added little pieces of felt secured with split pins to sticky backed magnets to hold needles and pins, and a little pocket to hold a bobbin shaped piece of card wound with three different colours of cotton.

They won't last forever but don't take too long to make and are very functional - just a nice size to slip in your handbag (or desk drawer for the next time some annoying person like me wants to borrow a needle or pin!)

ACCORDION BOOK FOR A PAPERCLIP COLLECTION

Someone made reference to something being "as boring as a paperclip collection", and although I agreed, whilst I was sorting thorough my craft room, it dawned on me that I might just possibly, at a stretch, perhaps be........a paperclip collector myself.

That left two alternatives - denial or celebration.  Having decided on the latter, Imade this little accordion book in which to display (some of) the collection.  I love this style of book.  Its super easy to make, but it sits so nicely that the whole contents can be displayed at once, or you can turn the pages like a regular book.  Better still it packs away easily for storage.  I used a fairly stiff card for the "pages" and covered some slightly higher and wider panels for the back and front, securing some ribbon under to tie it closed.

I was sure that the paperclip comment was a quote, and upon consulting Dr Google was delighted to find that it came from Sesame Street (Ernie to Bert, even although Ernie had his own collection!)
Better still, there was a whole song!!!  This solved the problem of what to write on the back - and I liked the sentiment - its easy to find beauty in a sunset or panoramic landscape - sometimes you just have to try a little harder to see it things like.........PAPERCLIPS!!!

PAPERCLIP ACCORDIAN BOOK

EASY BOOK

This is one of the very simplest ways to make a little note book.  I should have put something next to it to indicate scale, but its about 9cm high - just right for pockets or bags.

I just folded up some nice handmade paper for the pages (folding each in half and then stacking), cut the cover out of double-sided scrapbooking paper (G45), and placed in around the outside.

I lay the stack out flat and put some paper clips around the edge so the stack wouldn't slip whilst I used a sharp, thick needle to make a hole in the middle of the fold (spine).  I then added two holes equidistant on either side of the middle.

All that remained was to sew the pages together, using thin twine.  Starting from the outside of the middle hole, sew into the centre then out through one of the side holes, then back in through the other side hole, then back out the middle hole again.  Finish by tying the ends together.  How simple is that!!

TUNNEL BOOK

Tunnel Book

This was supposed to be a sample, but I liked it enough to add a cover, so at least it's a pretty sample.
Begin with two accordian pleated sides of the same size.  Add panels of the same size with centred cut outs of decreasing size.  (I used nesting dies).
I put a piece of mirror board at the end, so you can look down the tunnel and see yourself!  If you're more arty, you could make a scene with different features on each layer.

ENVELOPE BOOK

OUTSIDE VIEW

This is my second try at an envelope book - not because the first one didn't turn out - quite the reverse.  It proved so useful to store all those little alphabet die-cuts etc that I thought I'd better make another one.

I used the super simple approach of just sticking the flap of one envelope onto the body of the next (using double-sided tape rather than the envelope adhesive for a more reliable bond).  I cut patterned paper (Graphic45) into rectangles just large enough to cover the reverse of each envelope with a little border around each.

Then it was just adding some paper decoration to the front, and a reinfoced hole (glue the layers together first then use a handpunch to punch through all layers) for the tie.  Fold in an accordian and there you are!

FINISHED ENVELOPE BOOK

INSIDE VIEW

COVERED NOTEBOOK

COVERED NOTEBOOK

A lot of people are covering books for kids before school goes back.  Why make it just for them!

Covering (in my case cheap) notebooks with those scrapbooking papers you bought five years ago and never quite got around to using, is a great way to get them out of the cupboard.

I've added a frame with a couple of split pins and a simple die-cut with a black rhinestone centre to the panel of paper on the front of my notebook, and put a simple piece of the same paper on the back.

If you have a big stack of your own notebooks ready to go, why not make some for family/friends.  

DOUBLE LAYER STAMPING ON A BOOK PAGE

TWO LAYER STAMPING ON TEXT

A couple of weeks ago I posted an example of stamping onto a book page.  This is fine with a solid stamp, but works less well with a stamp that has fine detail such as this typewriter from Rubbadubbadoo, which tends to get lost amongst the text.

One solution is to make a background stamp - I used fun foam cut with deckle scissors - stamp over the text with this, then stamp your feature stamp on top using a darker ink.

I whipped this example up fairly quickly and would probably use a lighter brown for the background and a very dark cocoa brown for the typewriter if I was making for a "real" project.

MAKE A BACKGROUND STAMP

STAMPING ONTO BOOK PAGES

Quite a while ago I shared an example of printing onto book pages.  Stamping onto book pages is even easier!!!!

The bird doesn't exactly go with the text (from a John le Carre novel) but if you were thoughtful you could make some more meaningful pairings between stamp and background.

VASES FOR PAPER FLOWERS

REPURPOSED JARS - TWINE VASES

The papercraft aspect if this project are the flowers in the vase - the lilies that have featured previously, and the little text flowers that were made by stacking up three layers of two sizes of retro flower punched book pages.  The layers are secured with wire threaded through a button and twisted underneath to form stems.

Actually the flowers are a bit of a pretext to share these little vases (made from an empty jam jar and herb container).  I was feeling a bit overly tired and wanted something that involved a minimal amount of brainpower (since I'm not very good at sitting in front of the TV and doing nothing with my hands) and saw these in a craft book from the 1970s - all the go back them, and making a revival now, I think.  Just pick a jar, get some string, and wind, coating the jar with a thin layer of tacky craft glue as you go.  I had some hessian trim in a contrasting colour to add as a feature but this is optional.  If you like to fold paper flowers or want a container for pens and pencils these are ideal - very low cost and even lower brain power required.

FLAG CARD

FRONT OF FLAG CARD

 A flag card is easy to construct and has high impact "looks".  All I did to make this one was to make an accordion fold spine and sandwich it between the covers (using double sided tape to secure).  Stick one lot of "flags"to the top and bottom of one side of each fold and the other to the rear between them.  When you open the card up they pop out in different directions.  You can vary the size of the "flags" and the number etc.
Because I was making this one as a sample, I cheated and used some paper sample swatches for the "flags" and just popped on a punched shape to decorate.  In other words I wouldn't actually plan to give this to anyone, although I do prefer to keep the cover plain when there is an interesting middle.

As I was making it, it did occur to me that a slightly larger version of the flag card would make a great little mini album.

INSIDE OF FLAG CARD

EXPRESS SCRAPBOOKING

Scrapbook Express

I was a day late posting (first time ever in over a year) last week.....partly because I was working on this week's offering.
We had a weekend in Melbourne and rather than consign the photos to the "Gunnadoo" pile I decided to do something with them straight away.  I'm not at avid scrapbooker but quite like the concept of mini albums which in my household are more likely to be looked through than 12 x 12 epic productions.
Luck (good or bad I'm not sure which) would have it that I only took my little pocket camera with me and somehow in re-setting the light sensitivity I also changed the image quality to small.....no more that about four inches at 300dpi.  That meant I didn't have to agonize about appropriate sizing - basically everything was edited to 2 x 3, 2 x 2 or 3 x 3 (inches). This also made layouts simple as the pages were cut to fit these sizes  I used textured ivory off-cuts. I kept to a simple colour scheme - ivory, black, red and silver.  As the aim was to undertake this project  immediately while events were fresh in my mind and before it became just another thing on the "to do" pile I decided to try and finish within a week (bearing in mind I work full-time so we are talking evenings).  As a consequence rather than play around with fancy binding I made a template to ensure that all the holes were cut  in the same place and simply punched a hole in the corner of all the pages and fixed them together with a screw post.  I used my Cuttlebug to die-cut the front page title but other than that all the rest of the journalling was handwritten.  (This was actually the biggest challenge as I always feel that my writing is never neat enough even although intellectually I know that this is not the point).  I used my score board to score lines onto ivory card before writing so that I could keep the text more or less straight and I didn't ruin a whole page if I made a mistake. I cut most of the journalling blocks with a 2 inch square hole punch.  
Everything that would fit went onto the pages- over 100 photos, footy and movie tickets, boarding passes etc and yes......it was finished withing the week!!!  It won't win any prizes for neatness or originality and I won't be bringing it out to show the visitors........but I didn't make it for them.  In 10 years time hopefully I
can browse through the pages and remember a really lovely weekend away.  So my advice to myself is don't always put it away until I have time........JUST DO IT!!

OBSCURING TEXT FROM BOOK PAGES

PAGES WITH PAINT

PAGES WITH GESSO

WOVEN GESSO STRIPS

I've been playing around with old book pages over the last few weeks.  The hardest bit was biting the bullet and actually tearing up a book!!!   In the end this one was a very old paperback which had pages missing and which was falling apart.  Plus I already had another copy!  Even so........Having finally cleared the first hurdle the rest has been comparatively easy.

One of the issues faced when using book pages for craft projects is that sometimes the actual words on the page are inappropriate.  I gave some of the pages a light coating of acrylic paint  - a second light coat would have obscured the words sufficiently whilst still retaining the look of text.  For the second sample I used gesso, with similar results.  The main difference was that the latter was "toothier" and would probably make a better base for stamping etc.

If you're still worrying about the text being too readable, you could always cut your paper into strips and weave it together as shown in the third picture!

COVERED NOTEBOOK

Its a bit of a cheat to call this a technique, but I was pleased with the results of covering this discount store notebook with some lovely patterned paper, and so thought I'd share.  The blue is Bazzill, and the black strip is ribbon, which also doubles as a bookmark.  A few black adhesive pearls were used to finish.