How To Make A Mini-Concertina Book Using Wooden Shapes

Hi Guys, hope you having been enjoying the celebratory makes and projects from the design team for Quixotic Paperie's birthday? Here is my offering for you, I'm using the wooden alterable shapes from Quixotic Paperie along with other yummy items to make a mini-concertina book.

You might have noticed it is the round ornament bauble shaped wooden shape? You don't have to use them just for Christmas!

What you will need:

Stamps - Artistic Outpost Ephemeral Backgrounds; Artistic Outpost Birds Of A Feather; Studio G Alphas

Papers - Kraft Card; Graphic 45 Steampunk Debutante

Colouring - Pencils

Inks - Distresss inks; Distress stains; Archival Jet Black; Archival coffee

Usual Suspects - Golden Gel medium; Gesso

Tools - Scissors; Crop-A-Dile; Cuttlebug; Spellbinders Nestibilities Circle dies; Blending tools and foam; Ruler; Scoring tool

Others - Wooden Shape Round ornament with hole; Fabric; Tim Holtz Idea-Ology Sprockets; Viva Decor Gel Pen Walnut; EZ Mount

Make A Template For The Inner Pages

If you need to make the hole in the wooden shape bigger then before making the inner pages template use the Crop-A-Dile to make the hole bigger. Then use the wooden shape to cut a rough template to give the size of the inside pages. I've made sure that the hole in the ornament is not covered.

Score And Fold Kraft Card

To make the inside concertina pages use the template to score a line in the Kraft card and fold it.

Use the fold to score the next line and keep scoring and folding until you have the number of pages you want or until you run out of card! Make sure that your first and last pages are both folded in the same direction i.e. the first and last page are both valley folds when attached to the covers (see picture below - 'Assemble Mini Book').

Cut Inside Pages

For this step you can either use your template to cut out the inside pages, making sure you leave the left and right folded sides of the circle uncut to give the concertina effect.

Another method is to use the Spellbinders nestibilities dies. Pick the die nearest to the size you want and line up the folded Kraft card on the die, again leaving the left and right folded sides untouched by the die. Use the thinner cutting plate and some shims with your cutting machine and run the card and die through the machine a couple of times. It wont cut all the way through and you might need to experiment with the shims to get the right thinkness.

Finish cutting the pages with the scissors, the die will have left guidelines in the card it has not cut through.

The inside pages are ready to decorate anyway you want. For this tutorial I've used distress stains to colour them.

Prepare the wooden shapes with a layer of gesso and once it is dry colour as you wish, I've used distress ink and stains in this tutorial.

Assemble Mini Book

I used soft Golden Gel Medium to apply the first and last page to the covers making sure that the holes are next to each other at the 'spine' of the book.

'Bind' The Book

I've used a strip of fabric coloured with distress stains to tie the covers together, making sure that it is not so tight that you can't open the book. You can of course make the knot easy to tie and untie so that you can see both sides of the concertina pages if you have decorated both sides.

The book is finished and ready to decorate however you want!

Have fun with this tutorial.

Kim