Accordion Book Part 1

This week I have been struggling with what type of project to develop. I have been through a stack of magazines, sorted through my past projects, and just sat and doodled. I was intrigued by the accordion books idea.

I put up two posts from last year that showed a previous project. This book will be a little bit different.  Plus I am going to make this two posts. This first one is about building the book itself. On Wednesday I will post how I created some of the decorative pages. My design includes a couple of pop-up pages and some pockets.

I started with two sheet of 12x12 cardstock. I cut each one in half so I have a six inch tall book. A half inch on one end was folded on one sheet to create a way to glue the sheets together. Then the sheets were folded to create the 6x4” pages, starting from the middle where they are glued together. You can make your book as many pages as you want by adding more sheets to the end. Once you fold one page, you can use it as the guide for folding all the others. When you get to the end of the page strip, your page won’t be the full size. Just add another strip and keep folding till you get it the size/length you want. Then cut the last page with an extra ½” for gluing it to the cover. I only used three of my 4x12” strips for the pages. I saved the last one because I had plans for it later in the project.

I used Yes! Glue for this project. (Yes! Glue is specially designed for scrapbooking and paper projects. It is 100% acid free and perfect for archival projects. Water based for easy clean up)

While the glue dried on the pages, I cut two pieces of chip board 6 x4”for the cover. They are the same size as the pages, but once they are covered they will be slightly larger. Decorative paper was chosen from my stash for the covers and glued on. The inside of the covers will be done later, after the pages are done. Chipboard is hard to cut, but with determination, and a craft knife, I got the pieces done. You could use cereal box cardboard instead and just glue two pieces together for better stability and stiffness.

 

I decided my theme would be nature. I love trees and being outside. I have some fun rubber stamps and can put some fun pages together.

The paper for the cover is shiny and so looks cool.  It covered the chipboard nicely.

I attached the page sheet to the front and back cover pieces at this point so the inside cover paper would go over it and hold the book together. Then I glued on the inside cover papers. I let all this dry thoroughly before going on to decorate the pages.

I glued the page sheet to the cover pieces so it would open from both sides. Then I would have two books in one. I could do each side differently, or make them follow the same theme. In this case they will relate to each other.

Once you have reached this step it’s up to you how you decorate the pages. Photos, yarn, fabrics, glitter glue, art, or whatever you choose can go into the book. I cut some decorative papers and glued them on the pages as backgrounds. These will inspire what goes onto each page. I just have to remember that these backgrounds might be completely covered when I’m done. So I can’t get too attached to making them too perfect and pretty which will keep me from adding stuff.

 

To keep the book together I punched holes in the cover and ran some decorative hemp cords through so I could tie it together when not reading it. Since the chipboard is so thick and hard to put a hole through, I used the Dremel tool to drill a hole in the edge of one side. The cords wrap around and tie to hold the book together. This allows me to add lots of things to the pages and the tie holds it no matter how thick it gets.

I am working on the pages and will post the final results on Wednesday. I hope you try something new this week

Til next time. J

Terri

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