Making Little Books

I had forgotten how long it can take to prepare and spent all morning putting my pictures together for this post. Then got sidetracked into deleting and rearranging emails! So it is late evening and I am back to little books.


When I am going to make one of these Flat-Style Australian Reversed Piano Hinge books I start with sourcing the paper for the pages. Cut your paper so each sheet is twice as wide as the page size you want.
Decide how many pages you want in each signature (group of pages) and how many signatures you want in your book. Each sheet will make 4 pages.

For a small book you could try 3 signatures of 3 sheets each. That would give you 4x9= 36 pages in your book.

In this diagram you see one sheet on the left, then the sheet folded to make the 4 pages.

Below is the paper for the shallow accordian or concertina that is used for binding the book.

If the pages are 15 cm high you might make the concertina 10 cm high. The length is determined by how many signatures you want in the book. The concertina shown is folded to hold 2 signatures.

 
In this diagram is a signature made of 3 sheets of paper. The sheets are folded. The position of the concertina is marked in the fold of the signature and a slit carefully cut a mm or 2 longer than the concertina.

The pleat of the concertina is carefully inserted through the slit from the back and the sheets pressed down so the paper or card pin can be inserted to hold the pages in place.Then repeat with the remaining signatures.

For this small book (15x10 cm) I prepared three signatures. I decorated the concertina with gel pens and used plain white card for the pins. You can see the pleat of the concertina with the white pin through it holding the pages in place. The pages in this style of book open very flat. I cut up an old art study project for the covers. I glued the wings of the concertina to the first and last pages of the book and then glued the covers on. Use wax paper between the part you're gluing and the rest of the book to keep it clean. Put your little book under a thick book to provided pressure to keep it flat while the glue is drying. Use wax paper around your book to protect other surfaces from the glue.

This book is bigger 18x15 cm. I used watercolour paper for the pages so only used 2 sheets of paper for each signature. I wanted 32 pages so that meant I had to have 4 signatures.

The book is larger so I used two concertinas. I could have made these entirely separate but decided I might find it easier to handle if I kept them connected.
 
The concertina was made of light card. I used strips of light card cut from an old painting project for the pins. The pins must be narrow enough to thread through the pleats but wide enough to stay in place and hold the sheets of paper firmly.

This is the first little book I made.It is 15x10 cm. I used an empty cereal box for the pins and for the covers.

I glued the wings of the concertina to the covers and then glued a decorated sheet of  paper to the cover and the first page of the book. I did the same for the back cover.

You don't have to glue the covers on the book. This book  has its pages made of sheets of ordinary A4 printer paper.

I glued the wings of the concertinas to the first and last pages. You can barely see it as the paper is white- top left.
Then I made a loose cover by folding brown kraft paper. We used to cover our school books this way when I was little. At that time we cut open brown paper grocery bags and iron them flat before folding them to make the cover.

You measure the size of the book. The cover paper needs to be  about twice as high and 4 times as wide as the book. Fold down from the top and up from the bottom so that the cover is slightly higher than the book. Then fold over about a quarter of  one side of the cover. You want to be able to insert the first page into this. Trim the cover with scissors if you folded over too much. Then close the book with the cover on the front page and fold the other side over the back page. Insert the back page into the fold. If the cover is too long trim some paper off. You can decorate your cover in a variety of ways or use paper that is already decorative.

I made the cover to fit the book and then decorated the outside with a collage of decorated paper from an old project. After drying the collage under the pressure of a big book I painted it with a good coat of PVA to protect the surface.