Making a Booklet from One Sheet of Paper

1. Making A Booklet from a Single Sheet of Paper Intro: Bookmaking is a soothing art process of measuring and folding paper and sewing the pages together to create a handmade book. It's the process of transforming sheets of paper into something that can be filled with illustrations, text, and embellishments. In today's class, we'll simplify the bookmaking process to eliminate the measuring and sewing procedures, and create a simple booklet from a single sheet of paper. Now you can use any size sheet of paper, just as long as it's square or a rectangle. From there. We'll fold, make a few carefully place cuts with scissors, and then refold that paper. The result is a small booklet that you can personalize as you wish. Will add a paper cover to our booklet to make it look more like a traditional book. Choose your paper, patterns and colors, and join me in the process of creating three different booklets, each from a single sheet of paper. 2. Class Supplies: So to make our booklets from one single sheet of paper, one page, you just need to choose that paper that you'd like to use. Now here I just have a piece of origami paper and it's an a square formation and that's fine. It's about a six inch square. I just have a book page and it can be any size, but it does have nice right angles, so I just trim that down. Here's just a standard 8.5 by 11 piece of scrapbook paper. And here's a 12 by 12 piece of scrapbook paper. It's a little heavier than regular paper, but the rest of them are just paper. And then to embellish and decorate the book further, like to make the cover. I like to use card stock, so I just have a few pieces of card stock that I will be big enough for my covers. And while you don't need a ruler specifically for the book pages, for the meat of the book, it will be helpful to have one to make the cover and it's a simple measurement. I also have a bone folder here and that just helps create the creases in the paper. But you can use anything that won't tear the paper. Some people like to use a butter knife. I'd like to use the handle on that butter knife or even a credit card. You can even use your fingernail if you don't have a folder, pair of scissors to cut the paper, I have some permanent tape to adhere my cover to my book pages and in some cases to adhere the book pages to each other. And then I have a pencil. In the next chapter, we'll get started. 3. Book #1: Folding Pages: Now to start our first pamphlet using just a standard 8.5 by 11 piece of paper. In my case, I have it as scrapbook paper. You can make two formations. You can make a portrait mode where the pages wind up looking just like a regular, traditional book. Or you can do a landscape mode where the pages are longer than they are taller. And either way you start with the same procedure. So we'll begin. There's no measuring for this. I just have my piece of paper. The first thing I'm gonna do is make a fold down the center. And I like to match up the corners and then it kinda just use my left hand to hold it in place. Drag my finger across, making a little dent in the paper. And then I pull down and push up and then I'll go over it again with my bone folder. And if I want a really crisp seem, I can fold it over again and go down. Go up and down again. So there's my first fold. Now you can see it's not perfect here. Vesna, a problem for me, but if you want to make it precise, you'll make sure to line that up carefully. The second fold, I'd like to take my paper, hold it at a right angle and fold the outer part portion into the center. And I use that center as a guide. And again, I make my fold and then I increase it with my bone folder. And I'll do this with the other side as well. So what I'd like to do at this point is I like to just reinforce the folds. And by that I mean, I'll fold them the opposite way that I folded them now. And that just makes a nice solid crease. So to start with, we'll just divide this paper in half and then half again. So I turn the formation, so now it's tall and I'll do that same procedure. I'll make it perfectly nice fold, folding it in half, and then half again on either side. Flip it around, make that bold to the side. And then I'll reinforce these folds as well. Just by folding them back on themselves, following that crease that we made. So as you can see, we have four blocks going across based on our folds and four blocks going down. In the next chapter, we'll come back and we'll talk about creating our pages. 4. Cutting the Pages: So now that you have your paper folded, and I'm going to keep it this way just because it's easier to see the contrast on the white of the paper. Now you make your decision if you want the folds to be long so that the pages are very wide. Or if you want the folds to be tall so that the pages are traditional format. We'll do tall today. So all you do is when you make your lines, you want to make sure that they follow what would normally be folded page. So to do that, I'm going to have to make trace my lines to make my cut. Now normally I wouldn't do this tracing, but for the video purposes to see, I think it makes it much easier. I'm going to take a pencil and I'm going to just make a line down on the fold here, leaving the top fold untouched. And that's going to be my cut line. I just went on this folds where the lines intersect. Up until this folds where the lines intersect. On the next one, I'm going to start at the top and I'm going to go down leaving the last one open. So now you can see this line and this line, and then I'll alternate it again. So over here I'll start one down and go right to the base. Take my scissors and very carefully, I'll cut along that line. I'll do the same thing down the center in over here as well. So now I have my pieces. I still have the folds in the creases that we made. But I have What kind of looks like a maze here. So to start folding it so that it looks like a pages of a book, I just take my first fold and I fold it in, and then I reverse it and folded out. And I go all the way along, going over and under and over and under. And when I come to those intersections, I just flip them over, under, over and under. And I continue this way. And so when I'm done, I have my paper folded so that when it opens the first page, I have another page and another page and so on. When I hold them together, you can see all the pages from up top there, just an accordion fold. So we've taken a 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper and cut it in a way that we have this long line. The book isn't done right now. Our next stage is to adhere these pages together, particularly the ones that are back-to-back. So in the next chapter, we'll come back and adhere our pages together to make more of a book. 5. Adhering the Pages: So here we have our book and we want to adhere to pages but overlap together. So the way to figure that out, as you can do it as you go or you can. As I've started prepare the pieces that are back-to-back with adhesive first, just using some permanent tape, you can use whatever adhesive you like, a glue stick, glue, dots, whatever you're comfortable with. So I just set the tape down, my burnish it and remove the back, the little plastic backing. And I'll start on this side. So I put some pins underneath the plastic backing just to help me but remove it because it's tape is very sticky. So I like to fold up my piece very gently. And when I get to the part with the sticky back, I'll press it down and then burnish it some more. Continue all the way around this piece here and show you when it's done. So now I adhere those double flaps down, these three flaps down. And now I can put the cover on my book or I could adhere the other pages, the remaining pages together. And so I think I'll add here the pages together using the same technique with putting some double-sided tape just on the side there. Then we'll come back and take a look at the book with the pages it here, and work on our cover. 6. Making the Cover: So now I have my book with my seven pages plus the two ends here. For the cover. You can see all the pages. And then I want to make the cover. So I took this piece of card stock that I thought coordinated well with it and I cut it down to the size just slightly bigger than the 23 quarter inches of the height of the book. And I left this extended, gonna take my double-sided tape and adhere it to the cover here. And then go take the paper that I cut and put it right on carefully with just a slight overhang. Now burnish that down. And then I wrap it around completely around the book. I'll make a little bit of a crease. And then I'll put adhesive on the back pages ended here that down. Furnish it well, and then I just like to take my pair of scissors and trim it and I'll trim any loose edges that remain if I didn't fold it quite right. I'll make a nice neat trim. And there I have our first book. Now you can continue to embellish this and decorate the pages further. You could put in another piece of card stock here or a little piece of leather for the spine. But you have a cute little book made from a single sheet of 8.5 by 11 paper. The next chapter, we'll create a book using a square page. 7. Book #2: Folding the Pages: So now the book can be made in the same process using square sheet of paper instead of rectangular sheet. And it doesn't matter whether you use a small sheet like this six inch square or this larger 12 and square. We'll start with the 12 inch square. I take the paper and I just folded in half. So I go right down the center, holding it in place. And the larger the paper, and typically the more pages you have. Although you could still do just a few pages, you want to be really careful with your folds because any slight imperfection will be magnified through the course of this process. I take my page, my paper, and folded in right to that center crease. And because this paper is a little stiffer, I have to really make an effort to make that crease snakes and sharpen. This can be done with card stock, but it does produce a thicker results. So you just want to find the paper that you're comfortable with working on. I'll reinforce my folds, my creases. Turn the paper the opposite way, go through the same procedure. But if you want to change the size of your pages instead of having them square. Because with a square sheet, if you make four by four folds, they'll all be square. If perhaps you want to make them more book shape, traditional book shape. But you'll wanna do is create three folds instead of four folds. We're columns. So to do that, I just take my ruler and I just measure the 12 inches. I'll divide it into three. So every four inches, I'll put a line. So at the four inches and the eight inch mark, I'll make a line and this was where I'll make my fold, my four-inch, my eight inch mark. And now I'll start my folds by bringing this over to my four-inch mark. Because it's big paper, I have a lot more area to work with. So I'll pull my thumb across and pull it down towards me in a way and then reinforce it with a bone folder. And I'll push it this way as well. Now I'll take this sheet and fold it this side and fold it towards the folds. I created the crease, again, starting from the middle, going up and down, reinforcing that folds. And if I wanted to, I could make more folds dividing these sections in half as well to get a smaller book. But for this, I want this larger sheet. Each of the pages approximately will be three inches wide by four inches tall. So once again, I'm ready to start my cuts and we'll do that in the next chapter. 8. Cutting the Pages: So now to start making my cuts, to make my folded pages on this 12 by 12 sheet, I'm going to trace them with a ruler and a pencil because it's easier to see on camera. But once again, I have to decide if I want the book to be tall like a traditional book or wide landscape mode. And because the other one was taught, I think we'll do this one in landscape mode. So we want the folds of the paper to be on these tall areas. So I'm going to start right here on the left-hand side at the intersection of the first square. Trace it down. The next one. I'll start up one square. Go all the way up. And remember I'm just alternating where my cut lines will be. Cut them out here. And in the next chapter we'll come back and adhere our pages together. 9. Adhering the Pages: So now we can start our fold to create our book. And I like my end pages to be out because they then they attach to the cover. Soon it's going to flip my pages back and forth just for practice because if I don't like the way it looks, I can refold it before I adhere it together. But I have my book here in the landscape formation. And this is what it will look like when it's done. Now, this page here is going to be a very thick page. So I just have to keep that in mind while I'm adhering my pages together. And I'll start right in the center here. Take my tape. So we have our first page together. And over here we have this dual page and this tool page. And I want to adhere those together. Start right here, even though this is the good side together. Same thing over here. So I have the beginning of my book coming together. Here, these pages together. And here I have my book. Me from one sheet of 12 by 12 paper. Can attach these pages further. And then we'll add our cover in the next chapter. 10. Making the Cover and Belly Band: So I have my card stock cut to the width, just slightly larger than the three inch width that I want. I would add my adhesive. And then for this one, do you think I'm going to leave the cover extended? Just like that look. But I do need to make some sort of device to hold it shut. So I'll make just a little what they call a belly band to go around here. So I have another piece of card stock here. And I'm just going to eyeball it, wrapping it around my piece, and then just giving it a little give here, a little loose area. And I'll snip that off. And then I can adhere this together. And then I'd hear the band. Make sure it's in the back. And I can just slide it off. And I have my book. In the next chapter, we'll make our last and final book using a book page. 11. Book #3: Folding the Pages: So new, I like to take book pages to make pages of my book. It's kind of a funny thing. So what I do is I take my rectangular shape book page and I fold it in half and I go through, go through all the motions again of the folds. So I'll fold it in half and this is where I can decide approximately the size pages I want. So I'll start with the first fold to the center, and then the next ones from the side coming in. Reinforce those folds. Flipping them in a different direction. Going over them with a bone folder to really sharpen them up. And then I can take my page, turn it in different formation and do the same procedure. Fold it again, use my bone folder. Then I'll fold it in. And this will make a nice tiny little book that hang on a chain will be a cute little piece of jewelry, little focal point, or maybe a charm for an art journal. Fold the pages in, rate to decrease. Again, reinforce those creases. And then I can decide approximately how I want those folds to go. They are going to be tiny. The very cute. It's a little harder to see. Pencil marks all. Use a little highlighter here. Now I can make my cuts. Book paper is a little more delicate than the regular paper. At least this book paper is. So I'll just try and handle it a little more carefully. Now I can increase my folds over and under, over and under. Have both sides of my book and my pages here. You just need to be adhered. I'll do that and we'll come back in the next chapter and create our cover. 12. Making the Cover: So now I have all my pages adhered. So I'll have this for a book and these for the pages. And as I hold it down, I can see there's a little bit of overhang on some of the pages. So I'm very carefully get it a snip those off, pull them aside and just give them a little trim with the scissors. Can do this on the bottom as well. And that's just for a neater look. Then I have my paper cut just a hair taller than my book. Here, my paper to the cover. Wrap it around to the back as well. I'll turn this cover down. And I have a very cute little book here. In the next chapter, we'll review the work we did today and look at some variations. 13. Class Wrap Up: So here are the completed books that we meet in class today. Holding this one close a little close pin using just a standard 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper. And then we have a little book here that's 23 quarter inches tall by 2.5 inches wide for each of the pages. And it produces a very cute effect that can really be embellished with all the different type of paper arts that you have. Washi tape and dicots and cutouts, journaling and stickers and collage. Here we have a smaller version using a book page to create the little pages of our book. And it's very cute. Again, this one's waiting to be embellished. The last one we used a square piece of 12 by 12 paper and folding it so and cutting it so that the formation was landscape instead of portrait. We have this interesting looking book here that's ready to be embellished. We can adhere this piece to the cover if we want or just keep it open like this. And then we just mean a paper belly band to hold it shut. Wanted to show you some variations. So here we have another book, may just the way we made our book pages book. So it became very small. Two inches by 138 inches. It's a cute little lightweight book that would be cute little charm or even cut in half and used as charm for an art journal. Here, I took a piece of 6-inch origami paper and I folded it and we have this beautiful square shapes here for the pages. And then lastly, this is another piece of 12 by 12 paper with a belly band. And I folded the initial folds quite a bit so that I have so many more papers. I didn't adhere them together because I wanted you to see how many pages you can really get in here. And it's kind of interesting the shape all by itself. I do like to hold it down. I do like to add little tuck spots and collages in here and tuck things between the pages using paperclips. So I'll set that aside so that's ready to be embellished as well. I hope you'll try your hand at one of these one-page booklets. Snap a photo of your work and post it in the project section. Please be sure to join me here on Skillshare to get notified a feature classes, and please consider leaving a review. Thanks for joining me today.