Go Make Something » Decos & Small Books

Gift Box Books

Lisa Vollrath — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 05:21:54 +0000

Every year, I try to do a couple of articles about recycling Christmas stuff into something new—and I usually don’t get it together to do them until after the holiday season. This year, while I was hunting through new holiday stuff at the dollar store, I had an idea that was best posted ahead of time, so you can think ahead.

These two books are made from printed gift boxes and leftover ribbon. My idea is that you’ll hit the dollar stores early, pick out the prettiest printed boxes you can find, use them to hold Christmas gifts for your family, and as soon as the boxes are emptied, snatch them up again, and recycle them into little books. They can hold prints of holiday photos for relatives far away, or CDs of photos if that’s how you roll. You can make little books to use for notes or test swatches of new techniques. You can gluebook in them, journal in them—whatever.

So, here’s how they go together:

Start with some printed gift boxes. I got this four-pack of medium boxes at the dollar store. Go early, because they always blow out of them quickly.

When Christmas is over, collect the boxes. You’ll need a top and a bottom for each book. Flatten the boxes out by cutting them at the corner folds.

Figure out how big you want the finished book to be, and do a little measuring. If your print is directional, be sure you’re working so the pieces end up oriented in the right direction. Start by cutting a straight line for the bottom edge of the book’s front cover, removing the bottom fold of the box

For this book, I’m going to make the pages half a sheet of paper. Covers should always be just a tad bigger than the pages, to protect the edges of your work. I placed a page on the printed side of the box, and used it as a guide for cutting, leaving just a bit extra around three sides. The fourth, left side will be where the binding is, and that’s where you don’t need the covers to extend beyond the pages.

Use the front cover as a guide to cut the back one. They should be the same size.

I used the fold line on the side of the boxes as part of my cover design, since the height of the orginal box was the right size for a binding section. For my half page-sized book, a fold of roughly 1-1/2 inches was just fine. You can choose to trim your fold off completely to do a flat book, or make it narrower or wider. It’s your book, so you decide. If you’re going to use a fold, give it a good crease now.

I decided to line the inside covers of my book with pretty papers, because the bare chipboard seemed to clash with the print of the front of the book, and the stark white of the back. If you’re using a pattern that looks good with plain chipboard, you can go without. Again, it’s your book, so you decide. If you want an inside cover lining, just apply some paper with a glue stick, then trim it to the size of the covers.

There are quite a few different ways to bind these books. You can tie them with ribbons or fibers, use binding rings, brads, or screw posts, or do a stick binding. Check the decos and small books section for a bazillion different binding techniques.

I chose to punch holes, and use ribbons to tie my books. First, I marked the holes with pencil, measuring to be sure they were centered on the fold, and equidistant from each edge. I also made sure that my holes were placed so the pages would be punched securely.

I punched holes as marked through both covers.

Next, I prepared the pages. For most booklets, that just means cutting a stack of them the right size. However, if you’re making something that will hold photos, recipe cards, or other bulky items, it’s best to cut the pages a little long, and fold them on the spine edge to create a spacer that will give a little ease between pages.

If you’re really into bulky stuff, do a double fold at the spine edge, to give yourself two layers of spacers. This way, your book will lay flat when it’s full, instead of turning into a wedge shape or a fan that never closes.

Line the pages up on the cover, and use one page as a template, marking where the holes should be.

Punch through all the pages, using the same template.

Line all the holes up on the back cover.

Place the front cover over the pages, and clamp the whole book to hold everything in place while you bind. I use kitchen clips or clothes pins for this.

For fun little books used for a short time, it’s fine to use gift wrap ribbons for the binding. If you’re planning to keep the book for a long time, those ribbons might not be strong enough, and might not look pretty after a while. Try satin ribbons or twine instead.

Re-curl the ribbons once they’ve been threaded through the holes and tied in a double knot.

Fantastic Folder Books

Lisa Vollrath — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:25:29 +0000

This week’s how-to is so simple, I’m almost embarassed to post it—but they’re so pretty, I just have to throw the idea out there:

Wondering what the heck these are? They’re folded pocket books, made from paper school folders. Livia waved her version of this idea at me about a year ago, and it took me that long to come up with a variation that looked different enough that I felt good about posting it. Here are the oh, so simple instructions:

Start with these. They’re paper two-pocket folders that kids use at school. I found mine at Wal-Mart for less than a dollar each. Get the cheapo ones that are lightweight and not very shiny if you want to collage or stamp on them, or you can fork out the whole dollar for folders that are already decorated, shiny and slightly heavier. These folders come in two styles: some have just pockets, and some have pockets plus a little three-hold brad tab for holding notebook paper. I bought a handful of each.

Livia’s folder was done full-sized, which made a tall, skinny book. I wanted something a little shorter. Since the fronts of my folders had a little embossed rectangle where a nametag is supposed to go, I decided to chop them off just below the embossing to get rid of it. That removed the top brad from the folder designed to hold notebook paper, but since there are two left, that’s OK. Cut your folders any height you wish.

Next, a little folding. Just fold the outside edges inward toward the center. I folded mine just short of the center, to allow them to close nicely.

That’s about it. Decorate and fill. I used the bandana effect described in a previous article to decorate mine, and filled them with papers cut to size, paint chips, envelopes, whatever.

I told you they were embarassingly simple!

An Easy CD Book

Lisa Vollrath — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 23:03:10 +0000

I enjoy making things from old CDs. At the office, we go through quite a few of these during our busiest periods, and unfortunately, once I’ve filled a CDR with files I’m transporting from the PC at home to the Mac at work and back again, there’s really nothing to be done with them other than throw them away. I feel compelled to find ways to incorporate these discards into my artwork.

Recently, friend and artist Barb Adams posted on Alterations a pic of a CD book she did to fit into an AOL tin. When CD decos came up as a topic on ARTdecos, I decided to try my own version of a CD booklet. Here’s what I did:

Materials:

Old CD

Big scissors – I used 10″ dressmaker shears

Ruler and pencil or marker

Metal tape from the duct section of the hardware store

Cardstock for pages

Xyron machine or adhesive of choice

Stapler or needle and thread

Paints, stamps, tissue paper, embossing powder or decorating tools of your choice

Instructions:

Draw a line on the front or colored side of an old CD, splitting the circle in half. Cut CD on line. Take your time cutting, and try to do it in one smooth motion rather than short, sawing cuts. Place the two pieces of the CD on your work surface, with the side you’d like to use as your outer covers facing down.

You’ll notice in this picture that the finish seems to be flaking away along my cut edge. Since I was planning to cover this edge with tape, and then paint and collage over it, I didn’t worry about it. Taping along the center of the CD, and then drawing the line and cutting will help this a little. Going in the complete opposite direction, you can also exploit this flaking to remove the silver finish completely, which leaves a clear CD. A light sanding will remove the finish, and leave a frosted effect.

Cut a piece of metal tape at least twice the length of the CD. Place the tape sticky side up on your work surface. Place one half of the CD onto the tape, and position the other piece at least 1/4″ away from it, as shown. This gap will allow your CD book to close with a minimal number of pages inside. If you plan on more pages, leave a bigger gap.

Fold the tails of the tape over the top and bottom of the CD, covering the spine. Let the tape overlap a bit, and trim the excess away. Burnish the tape to the CDs with your thumbnail.

Make pages for your CD booklet by laying the taped CD on some cardstock and tracing around it. I made three circles for mine, folded them in half, and stapled on the spine so the flat part of the staple was at the center of my booklet, and the raw parts would be enclosed by the cover. Once I had assembled my signature, I ran it through my Xyron machine and inserted it into the covers. I like this method, because it finishes the inside covers of the booklet. Trim page edges as necessary.

Decorate your finished booklet. For my example, I crumpled tissue and glued it to the exterior of the CD, then painted over it with blue Lumieres. The title was added with letter stamps embossed in silver and colored with markers.

A Fourteen Page House Deco

Lisa Vollrath — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 23:30:44 +0000

Some of the girls in ARTdecos, myself included, like to do dark work occasionally. We decided to organize ourselves into a dark deco round robin. When the list of sign ups was complete, we were left with 15 participants, and most of the group was in agreement that they wanted all 15 artists represented in each booklet. That means each of us has to produce a deco that contains enough pages for fourteen other artists’ work. That’s about twice the size of our usual decos—more than twice for mine, which usually only contain 4-6 pages.

For those of you who have never passed decos, they have to be pretty sturdy to survive their many trips through the mail. Although the artists in ARTdecos are a very careful, respectful bunch when it comes to handling each other’s art, you just can’t avoid the beating that 15 trips through the mail will give a paper booklet. There are some things you can do to minimize damage, though, like making the deco compact, and avoiding too much dimensional embellishment.

OK, so it had to be big, it had to take a beating, and it had to have some sort of dark theme—that was my assignment this afternoon. Here’s what I came up with. To make this deco, you’ll need:

A sheet of 12 x 12 black cardstock
Two sheets of 8.5 x 11 cardstock for pages
White waxed thread and a needle
A gluestick
A paper trimmer or scissors
A pencil and a ruler
Your choice of stuff to decorate with – I used red acrylic paint, an Oxford Impressions image stamped on tan tissue paper, some letter stamps, and a shred of black embossed chiffon

First, I folded my black cardstock in thirds. This will make a tall, skinny folded piece that’s roughly 4 inches wide.

Next, I cut my folded piece in half, to make it six inches tall. In retrospect, it might have been smarter to cut the height first, and then fold in in thirds. I was playing with size, so I now have the makings of a second deco cover. This happens a lot at my house…

Now I cut my rectangle into a house shape. I measured down two inches from the top, and made tick marks at the sides of the deco, and then made one mark at the top center. I drew lines from top center out to each side, and then cut using my paper trimmer. I can’t cut a straight line with scissors to save my life—don’t let the photo fool you. I set my cover aside for now, to work on the pages.

I folded my white cardstock in half, to make two folded pieces that were 4.25 inches wide. I cut them in half, so that I had four folded pieces 5.5 inches tall x 4.25 inches wide. Now comes the tricky part: I nested two pieces together. Because they’re made of cardstock, the interior pages will always stick out from the exterior ones. Since they were too wide for my booklet anyway, I could trim the pages down and solve this problem at the same time. I stuck my nested pages into the paper trimmer, and cut them down to 3.75 inches wide.

I did the same cut down to create the house shape that I did on my cover: measure down two inches, do two marks on the sides and one at top center, and then connect the sides to the center and cut on the lines.

I stitched my two sets of pages together using waxed thread and a needle. I make four holes in my fold to sew small booklets like this one. The needle goes in just to one side of the center of the fold, then up about an inch from the end of the booklet. It goes in again about an inch from the other end, and back up to the other side of center.

I tie a knot to finish my stitching. The tails of the knot, and the long stitch that shows at the back will all be hidden when the pages are glued in.

I glued my two sets of pages into the book, facing each other.

Yes, I really do apply handprints with my hand. I just squirt a little acrylic paint on, squish it around, and slap it onto my surface—and then immediately wash my hands, because red in particular will stain the skin a bit. Washing quickly avoids having to explain to your dinner companions why your hand is so red…

Inside the cover, I applied my contact information.

Cork Coaster Book

Lisa Vollrath — Sun, 14 Aug 2005 23:27:14 +0000

Yesterday, while I was shopping at Hobby Lobby, a package of cork coasters caught my eye. Six 1/8 x 3-7/8″ square coasters in a pack for two bucks looked like a good deal to me—and also looked like the covers for three small books.

Cork is a terrific material for mixed media artists. It can be rubber stamped with all but the most detailed designs, and it accepts dye inks beautifully. It’s also a good background material for collage—much more interesting than those papers that only offer a picture of a piece of cork.

To make this book, you’ll need:

Two cork coasters
Two sheets of cardstock
A glue stick
A ruler
Rubber stamps and ink – I used brown dye ink
Scissors

I started by backing the cork coasters with some cardstock. I did this both for durability and for aesthetic reasons—I knew the spine would be glued to the inside covers, and that it was white, so it would drive me nuts to open the book and see cork with a stripe of white. Better to have the whole inside cover white.

While I was at it, I also cut my interior pages. I traced around the coaster and cut out five pieces.

Next, I worked on the spine. I cut a strip of paper the same height as my coasters, and the width of my paper. Then I folded it into an accordian using my ruler. I’m too lazy to measure and mark each section, so I just line my clear quilting ruler up 1/2″ from the short edge, and fold against the side of the ruler—then flip the spine, line up the ruler again, and fold. It’s not perfection, but it’s pretty close.

I folded enough accordian for five interior pages, plus tabs for my front and back cover, and trimmed off the excess.

Now, to decorate the front cover. I like making my own rubber stamped collages, so I chose two wild grass stamps and a butterfly, and stamped them all with the same brown dye ink. I like the brown on the cork—it gives a nice, natural look that almost appears to be burnt into the surface.

To assemble the book, I first glued my front and back covers to the spine, lining them up. Then I trimmed the spine a bit, curving the edges so there wasn’t white sticking out at the corners.

Next, I flipped the book open, covers facing up, and applied glue to the entire spine, then refolded it. This keeps the book from exploding open on its own.

When the glue was dry, I opened up the book, and glued a page to each fold of the spine. The thickness of each double fold of the cardstock spine keeps my pages slightly separated, so they will accept dimensional embellishments without adding bulk.

Making a Comb Bound Book

Lisa Vollrath — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 23:25:26 +0000

Recently, a friend at Provo was kind enough to send me one of their Zision Punch ‘N’ Bind machines. I’d been eyeing all sorts of binding machines, so when I heard that Provo was offering one that would retail for a reasonable price, I had to try it out.

The Zision machine retails for around $35. in the US, which I think is a pretty good price for what arrived in my mailbox. This thing is big—it will bind 12×12 scrapbook pages. I was expecting a little weenie thing. The exterior, including the spines that spread the comb, is plastic, which kind of made me nervous, but only because I’m hell on tools. If I can break it or lose it, I probably will. Mercifully, I have so far not broken my lime green Zision machine.

The machine comes with three combs. I wanted a spine that was smaller than the ones provided. Would any comb fit? The answer is yes. I tested it out on plain old Office Depot combs in various sizes. Even the 1/4″ size I used on this book fit into the machine with a minimum of cussing—it was a little bit of a tight squeeze, but I did get the spines to open the comb so I could assemble my book.

OK, enough about the machine—you want to know how to make the book, right? To make this lovely grayscale book, you’ll need:

A stack of the big Behr paint chips (available at Home Depot) – I used six, because I was sending this book out as a deco
Some white cardstock to back the paint chips
A Zision machine or comb binder
A 1/4″ comb
Images, ephemera and stamps to decorate the book
A glue stick
Scissors

To start off, I backed all the paint chips with white cardstock. I did this for two reasons. First, there’s printing on the back, and I wanted a solid page. Second, six paint chips weren’t quite thick enough to fill a 1/4″ spine. Six paint chips backed with cardstock were a perfect fit.

Next, I punched my paint chips, one at a time, since I was punching through two pretty heavy layers of stock. Here’s how to punch, from the back of the Zision package (if you’re using a comb binder, the process is pretty much the same):

Insert the sheet of paper or cardstock into the paper slot.

Push button down firmly to punch.

With all six chips punched, I went ahead and decorated the front cover before binding. I’m really into cutting around the outside if figures right now, and floating them on a background. That’s sort of what I did with the woman’s photo. I also like hanging images off the edge and trimming them off. The rest of the embellishments are a stamped ruler, a piece of filmstrip, and a flattened bottle cap. Random elements, but all in grayscale.

Now, it’s time to bind:

Make sure that the teeth of the comb are curled inside the spine of the comb before placing it onto the binder. Insert the plastic comb between spines and push to the right, which will push the spines into the curls of the comb.

Push the pink levers up to open comb, then insert pages.

Lower pink lever and remove finished book.

I liked doing the comb binding for this project because it made everything go together so quickly. I usually spend a great deal of time binding decos, so it was fun to just decorate and go.

Accordian Spine Books

Lisa Vollrath — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 23:22:30 +0000

I love making little books out of unusual materials. A couple of months ago, I was working on a vintage nudes deco, and I wanted to play with a plain brown wrapper theme. (For those of you who are too young to remember this, magazines with risque content used to travel through the mail with a plain brown wrapper around them, to keep them safe from under age eyes.) I found some little brown paper bags, and decided to make my deco from them, tucking cards inside each one that the other artists could decorate with their risque vintage nude artwork. To flaunt the bags rather than the book construction, I chose to use an accordian spine. This construction method works well if your pages are made from something that you want to show off, without obstruction: tags, envelopes, and bags.

To make this book, you’ll need:

Plain brown paper – I buy this in the packaging and shipping section of my local mega-store. It’s cheap, and it makes great altered book backgrounds.
Small brown paper bags – Look in the party section of the same store. Mine were about the size of my hand, but these instructions will work for any size bag—even those great big ones that your groceries come in. I used six bags for my book. Use as many as you like.
A glue stick – I use inexpensive glue sticks from Office Depot.
A ruler – My general purpose ruler is a clear quilter’s ruler with red lines on it. I started life working with fabric, and some tools just carried over to my paper crafting habit. This ruler is one of them.
Scissors or a paper trimmer

Cut a strip of brown paper that’s the full width of the paper, and about as high as your paper bag is wide. I did this by cutting one straight edge, lining my bag up against it, and marking off the height—it was just slightly more than 3-1/2 inches for my little bags. Cut this strip with scissors or a paper trimmer.

Fold your paper in an accordian. For my smaller bags, I used a 3/4 inch spine. For larger bags, you might want to make it a little wider. Fold your accordian absolutely straight. I did this by lining up the short edge of my paper against the 3/4 inch mark on my ruler, and folding the paper against it.

Fold back and forth, keeping your paper straight and your folds uniform, to create an accordian. I usually do more folds than I need, but for my six bag book, I’ll need to do at least six folds in each direction. If you’re not sure how many folds to do, simply fold up your whole strip this first time, and trim away what you don’t need later.

Lay your accordian out flat, and apply glue to alternate folds. Press each glued fold to the piece next to it to create tabs. You’ll see as you do this that your tabs are creating a spine—they’re all right up against each other at one point, and flare out from there.

I should probably mention that some people prefer not to glue their accordians closed like this—they leave them open, which makes the book kind of boingy when it’s finished. Sometimes, they’re tied closed with ribbons at the spine instead of glued. I’m not much for the frou-frou, so I went for clean and simple here.

Since that last instruction was not crystal clear, here’s a photo of what your finished spine looks like. This is exactly the right size for my six paper bags—six tabs.

Now glue your bags in place. Each tab gets one bag glued to the front of it. This way, the tabs will be behind the bags. I’ve seen people do these with brightly colored spines, glued to the front side of their pages. I don’t really care for that look, so mine go behind, and generally match the pages of the book.

Here’s a top view of a book with all its pages glued in.

For me, this is the most important step: clamp your work, and let the glue set until it’s completely dry. This may seem like overkill, but I want this book to hold up through a year’s worth of travel all over the world—this way, I’m sure the pages will stay glued.

Once the book is dry, decorate it. In my example, I simply glued an address label from one of my magazines on the front, added a naughty postage stamp and a cancellation, and then tucked a decorated card inside the bag.

Matchbox Books

Lisa Vollrath — Fri, 14 May 2004 23:17:38 +0000

I love playing with matchboxes! They’re a wonderfully inexpensive item that can be incorporated into all types of artwork. One of the things I like to do with them is use them as drawers in little books. Here are two examples of matchbox books: one that has a traditional book-like cover, and one that’s simply a square of drawers.

To make these books, you’ll need:
Matchboxes – 5 for the first example, and 4 for the second
Cardboard or book binder’s board, enough to hold the matchboxes
Wide masking tape

Bamboo skewers

Paper for covers

Glue – I use plain old glue sticks

A pencil and a ruler

Papers and paints to cover matchboxes

Needle and heavy thread for drawer pulls

Ribbon, stamps or whatever you wish to decorate

For the 5 box book:

Empty your matchboxes, and line them up on a piece of board. I used heavy cardboard for mine, like the type that comes packed with bulk scrapbook papers. For this book, I’m choosing to have drawers come out of one side, the top and the bottom. Once you make a couple of these, you’ll see there are an infinite number of ways to position the match boxes—create your own ideal layout for your project. When you have your matchboxes in position, draw around the outside, leaving about 1/4 inch extra along one side and the top.

True up your lines with a ruler, and cut two cover pieces from your board. Find a place to line up the edges of your two covers for this next part—I used the edge of my work table for this.

Now, let’s make a spine! Tear off a long piece of masking tape, and position it beneath the covers of your book. To get the proper spacing for your spine, you’re going to line up a few items between the covers: some matchboxes standing on their sides, and a couple of bamboo skewers. Press your covers down onto the tape, and then remove the skewers, and try closing the book. The covers should wrap easily around the matchbox—if not, place your covers back onto the table, lift one away, and move it further out. I like using skewers for this—if two skewers is too tight a fit, I add a third one for spacing, and that usually does the trick.

Once you’re happy with the width of your spine, fold the edges of the masking tape toward the inside of the book. The spine will be just two layers of masking tape stuck together for the moment—don’t worry, there’s more support coming.

Do one more check to make sure you’re happy with the book’s size and spine width. If it closes easily at this point, you’re on the right track. If it doesn’t, stop now, remove the masking tape, and rebuild the spine. This takes a little practice to get the right width, but once you get it, you’ll know it by feel for the next time.

Lay a piece of your cover paper on your work table. For my book, I used some very heavyweight wrapping paper—it’s almost the weight of wrapping paper, but a little stiffer. Scrapbook papers will also work, but don’t mess with cardstock, or your cover will be bulky. Fabric might also work, but be sure to reinforce the exterior spine with something like a strip of leather. Position the book on the cover paper, making sure you have plenty of extra around the sides, top and bottom. Flip back one side of the cover, and apply glue stick liberally to the board and spine. Press down onto the cover paper. Repeat with the other side. Miter the corners of the paper. I trim mine closely, leaving paper the height of the board behind for folding.

Apply glue stick to both the covers and the cover paper, and fold all sides inward. At this point, I usually open and close the covers a couple of times, smoothing any creases or wrinkles that appear.

To finish off the inside of the book’s covers, cut a piece of endpaper just smaller than the covers, and glue in place. Once again, open and close covers, smoothing creases and wrinkles.

Now it’s time to decide what you want to do with your matchboxes. I’m sending this book out as a deco for other artists to work in, so I simply taped the matchboxes in place as they were. However, if you’re keeping your book, you might want to paint your matchboxes and trays, and then glue them in place. Wrapping the boxes with a small piece of decorative paper looks nice, too. If you want the drawers to be easy to open, try poking two small holes in the end, and threading floss, twine or fibers through them. A flat bead or charm makes a nice pull, or just knot off the fibers and leave a tail. Fill drawers with fun things—photos, words, charms, you name it.

For the 4 box book:

OK, it’s not really a book—it’s more like a four-sided drawer thingy. Whatever it is, it’s even easier to make. Like the earlier example, line up the matchboxes on a piece of cover board, and draw around the sides, leaving about 1/4 inch extra at the top and one side. True up the lines with a ruler, and cut two identical cover pieces from board.

Cut two pieces of cover paper larger than the cover size. Leave a good 1 inch extra on each side so your covers will be clean finished after this step. As before, glue down the board to the cover paper with a liberal amount of glue stick. Miter corners, apply glue to both paper and cover board, and fold cover paper in. Let both covers dry.

Since your matchboxes will be sandwiched between the two covers, there’s no reason to decorate the exterior of the boxes. However, one side of each box will show around the side of the finished book. If the pattern on the side of your matchbox bothers you, paint it or cover it now. I left mine alone for this book. Now is also a good time to remove the drawers and paint them, and to add pulls. For this style of book, a pull really isn’t optional—once the book is together, it’s almost impossible to get your fingers inside to pull a drawer open. Trust me, add some sort of pull! When you’re finished, glue the matchboxes in place, centering on the bottom cover.

Glue top cover in place. Stack a couple of heavy books on top of it, and let it sit for a few hours until the glue is completely dry.

Scrap Paper Books with Stick Bindings

Lisa Vollrath — Wed, 12 May 2004 23:19:30 +0000

Once again, my work table is exploding with scraps and leftovers. See that right corner? There are stacking trays under there that are supposed to contain my mess, but the pile has grown so large, you can’t even see them! It’s time to do something with all this stuff, but seriously, I just can’t bring myself to throw it all away. That means it’s time to find something useful to do with my extra paper bits—so today, I’m making scrap paper books.

First, I sort my papers into some sort of order. For me, that usually means doing some sort of color story with them. This first pile is aged whites and off-whites mixed with lavenders—sort of a nice, soft vintage grouping. In the mix are a piece of a dictionary page, some parchment, pieces of scrapbook papers, a corner of an old map print, and even a stained coffee filter.

Now it’s time to cut. I usually sift through and find the smallest piece in my pile, and then cut the largest piece I can from it. In this case, the piece came to roughly 4 x 6 inches. Before cutting further, I decide which edge will be bound—in this case, I want to bind the short edge. Knowing this, I’ll cut my papers so they’re oriented properly, with text pointing the correct direction. I cut as many pieces of my chosen size from each scrap as I can, and throw the remains away.

Here’s my pile of cut papers. I usually try to arrange them so that if there are two pages alike in the books, they’re not sitting next to each other. I also like to vary colors and textures—a glossy paper next to a handmade one, a lavender next to a natural. I choose a pretty paper for the top sheet, and usually try to place the heaviest piece of paper on the bottom, to support the book.

I clamp the book with my very high-tech clamps. I love using chip clips to clamp my work, because they usually have a little clear rubber ridge on the inside that protects the paper from being marked. These came from the dollar store, and have the extra added attraction of a magnet on the back side—I can hang them on my metal filing cabinet, where they’re easily accessible.

Once the book is clamped, I mark the top page for holes. On this book, I marked two spots roughly 1/4 inch from the side edge, and 1 inch from the top and bottom. Holes are punched using a regular hole punch from the office supply store. Sometimes, the paper is a little too thick to punch through all the layers at once, so I do a few sheets at a time.

For my binding, I’m going to use a bamboo skewer and some hemp twine. First, I roughly measure my skewer against the book. I like to make the stick part of this binding just a tad shorter than the height of the booklet, but I’ve also seen them done with sticks hanging over the edges. I cut my skewer to the desired length using wire cutters.

I cut two pieces of hemp twine, and knot them on one end, leaving tails in both directions. I slide the twine in one hole and out the other, letting the tails hang over the edges.

I slide the skewer underneath the knotted twine above one hole, and pull it tightly against the skewer. Laying the skewer over the second hole, I knot the twine over it. This leaves me with a skewer snuggly anchored against my book, and all the pages held in place. On this booklet, I pulled all the tails together and knotted them again, and then trimmed them. If I know this booklet will be roughly handled, I’ll add a dot of glue to hold the skewer in place, just in case the twine loosens a bit.

I did a second book, in red/gold/blue/natural, heavy on the vintage looking papers and images. Same steps as above, but when it came time to add the binding, I chose a rubber band and a stick from my backyard. I slide the rubber band up one hole, and push the stick into the loop. Then I pull the other end of the rubber band up through the second hole, and stretch it over the opposite end of the stick. This creates a nice snug binding. Use your imagination with this style of binding. For sticks, try popsicle sticks, lollipop sticks, straws, twigs, skewers, cinnamon sticks, an old pencil or paintbrush. For ties, plain rubber bands, hair ties, ribbons, twine and fibers.

Pages can also be made from anything. Here, I used an illustration removed from a book I was prepping to be altered. Think junk mail, newspaper, book pages, scrap papers, envelopes, tags—anything you have at hand can be bound into the book.

Don’t feel you have to make all your papers exactly the same size. Sometimes, I’ll intentionally cut some pages a little shorter or narrower, or tear the edges once they’re bound into the book just for variety.

Coffee Filter Book

Lisa Vollrath — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 23:11:11 +0000

I have some coffee filters I’ve aged by staining them with instant coffee. They look great, they smell great—now, what do I do with them? One very simple thing to make from coffee filters is a book. The cone-shaped filters make little pockets, which can hold letters, tags, cards, ATCs, or anything else you’d like to tuck inside. Here’s a quick lesson:

First, start with a pile of coffee filters. You can use them right out of the package, or follow these easy instructions for staining them with coffee. Figure out how many pockets you’d like your finished book to have, and then make yourself a stack of that many filters. You’ll see that the filters have one side that’s a simple fold, and another side that’s rippled, where the cut edge has been stamped closed. Make sure all your stamped edges are to the left in your stack—this will be the edge that is bound between the covers. Set the stack aside.

Trace a pattern around an extra filter. Cone-shaped coffee filters aren’t symmetrical, so your pattern won’t be, either. Leave about 1/4 inch extra around the top, right side, and bottom of the filter. Trace right against the edge of the left side.

Cut out two filters from cover stock. I used lightweight bristol stock for this cover, and I thought it was a little flimsy when I was finished. Maybe two layers would have been better, or some heavier cardstock.

Clamp the covers to the stack of coffee filters. I usually do this with kitchen chip clips—they’re inexpensive, and usually have a clear rubber protector that keeps the work from being scarred when clamped. I’ve clamped here on the top and right side—always use more than one clamp.

Punch holes along the spine of the book. I use a leather punch with an adjustable hole size for this. Since the holes are simply for stitching, I use the smallest setting. I did lay a ruler down and make a few marks so my holes would be somewhat evenly spaced. I ended up with nine holes spaced about 1/2 apart.

Now is a good time to do some decorating. I’m not really sure what I’ll be doing with this finished booklet yet, so collage or stamping is a little premature—but I can’t just slap solid covers on it! A little aging with some Colorbox Cat’s Eye chalks made the solid cover look more in tune with the stained coffee filters.

Once I’ve finished decorating, it’s time to assemble my booklet. This is as simple as it can be: place one cover on top of the stack of coffee filters, another on the bottom of the stack, and stitch through the holes. I did a running stitch starting at the top hole, down to the bottom, and then turned around and came back up to the top, tying my ends off in a knot, with long tails that will accept beads or charms later. I chose some hemp twine for this, but just about anything can be used for the stitching: linen threads, fibers, embroidery floss, yarn.