The Book Tutorial~ Part 1

I've been promising Mercedes a book tutorial for a while now....and figured I better get to it!!! Here are the little books I make......I like having readable books, makes life more interesting!!

And here's a side shot of the binding...

OK........So First......You gotta find a story. A lot of the older books can be read online if you know how to find them...Just google readable Dracula or whatever, and you should find it with no problem. I also use paragraphs, or parts of a book to do this. So once you have your 'words' take them into Microsoft works, or whatever program it is that you use to write letters with. I shirk them down first, trying to make it as small as possible, but where you can still read it.....Then I put them into 6 columns. There should be a tab for this in your program somewhere. You will see that it gets real short, real quick....Don't worry....Just copy and paste what you already have over and over again, until the whole sheet is full......and print. Don't forget to print the same thing on the back side, just flip the paper over and hit print again!!! Here are a couple of examples....

See...You Have to have at least 6 columns for this to work!!! (This next example has 8)

Now, you cut them into strips.....look at the picture, I can't explain it any better......

Then they need to be cut the other way into 1 inch pieces....See the next picture for what I'm talking about.

Now, you need to fold those pieces in half.

OK...make sure you put all the pages facing the right way...I tell you this because I've learned that the hard way!! I put the folded sides down and line them up using the table. Then I clamp it together. I normally use this nifty clamp thingie that I have....but of course it's MIA....So I used 2 clothes pins and then 2 more clamps to make sure it was as tight as I could get it!

Make sure you have your folded edges facing out!!! And go grab some craft glue! I've used Alene's Tacky glue.

I run a bead of glue down the edge and then use my fingers to smooth the glue out. It may look like you have to much, but that's ok! Let this dry overnight. This is what creates the binding of the book.

Once it is dry....You can open the pages like this....do you see the 'binding'?

I'll be back with the second part in a minute.......but first you have to go find some paper to use for the cover. I use scrapbook paper, but any kind will do.......