Darling Little Folded Books

Lately, I've been getting interested in making my own books.

We started with simple folded books. They're very easy to do. You can read some directions here. I'd try to explain but it's way easier to just point you at someone else. Fold, fold, fold, cut, fold, book!

Here's one folded and cut:

And here it is folded into a book:

This one got a purple cover, and gold foil endpapers and decoration.

A collection of several books:

Betcha didn't know I was so crafty, did you? Either did I - but I've had my eye on making books for a long time. One obstacle is that I can't cut straight: so I finally got a decent paper cutter, as well as an Exacto knife and a cutting matt. I still tend to be a little crooked, but at least now, the stuff doesn't look like it was cut by a drunk monkey.

The next step was to figure out how to print text onto a page that would fold into one of these books - that was harder. Maybe if I knew my way around desktop publishing software it would have been easier, but I triumphed using columns in MS Word and running stuff through the printer twice. Of course you can't fit many words in a wee book like this, but that was just fine for my purposes.

The little books are fast and easy, and fun to decorate. Give it a try sometime.