Bookbinding: Mini Wrapped Notebooks from Recycled Papers

1. Intro: Hi, and welcome to my studio. My name is Becca Ron. I'm a full time teaching artist, and I work in a small studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My work is primarily in fabric and paper, so I do a lot of things with sewing, with embroidery, but also combined with paper. So I do a lot of mixed media kind of projects kind of like this project we're going to do today in class. We are making mini wrapped matchbook style notebooks, and we're going to use recycled paper. When I first started learning bookbinding, one of the things that I found the most intimidating was that there were so many specialty tools, especially papers. Every teacher I took a class from talked about very specific kinds of papers with names and weights. And it was really hard for me as a beginner to understand how I could make another book using those same papers. So I try to, in my classes, give you as many different alternates as I can, because there's no one way to make a book. I love being able to use DIY tools, things that you can find in your house that you already have, and especially recycled papers where you can use whatever you have because there are no rules about making books. So jump over to the next lesson, and we'll get started talking about what our project is going to be for this class. 2. Your Project: The project for this class is to make these mini wrapped notebooks. So this is a really cool design that has a little flap that comes over onto the front and covers up part of the front cover. It's kind of like a match book. And so when you open these up, just by bending that little flap out, the cover wraps all the way around, so it protects your pages on all sides. And then you can tuck the flap back in to keep your book closed. So we're going to make our books from any kind of recycled paper you want to. This is a great book structure that you can make out of almost anything. In my examples in class, I'm going to use two different materials that I think are really fun. First, we're going to recycle some postcards. So you can use the art, the pretty side of the postcard, but I think what's even more fun is to use the back and the really cool looking stamps. So we're going to use that for one of our designs. The second one, we are going to grab some recycled security envelopes. Now, if you don't know what that is, these are the kind of envelopes that your bank statements and things like that come in. And when you open them up, they have these great black and white patterns printed on the inside. This is a great source of some fun patterned paper to use for your designs. We're going to take those security envelopes and we're going to make teeny, tiny little origami butterflies using that security paper. So that's two ways that you can use different kinds of recycled materials to make your books. And we'll talk about a whole bunch more. In the next lesson, I'm going to talk about the tools you need to make your project, and I'm going to give you as many alternates as I can. So I'll talk about the bookbinding tools that I use, but also DIY kind of things you can find like popsicle sticks that you can use to create books that are just as awesome. So jump over to the next lesson, and let's get started talking about the materials you'll need for your project. 3. Materials & Tools: Et's jump in and talk about tools and materials. I have a lot of things out on my desk, but most of them are going to be things that are really easy to find. Let's first start by talking about paper. This is the place where you get to personalize your project, and I designed this project, so we're going to use a lot of recycled paper or scraps from other projects. It's a small size, so you should be able to use up odds and ends that you've got. Now, the really cool, like, featured part of this project, I think, is I designed it to use some old postcards. So I participate in a group called Post Crossing, which is an international postcard exchange. And so I have a lot of cool postcards that people have sent me that I want to recycle into some art pieces. And so I picked out two that I'm going to use to make examples in this class. That have really cool stamps. Most of these, like the picture on the other side is okay. But for me, the part that's really exciting is the stamps. So in these two examples, I made up two little books using the stamps that were stuck on postcards, and we use part of the postcard to make the cover. So that's one material that you can use to make your covers. So if you have a cool postcard, you could even use a postcard like this one, which doesn't have a very exciting stamp, but this was from an art opening. So this has some cool art on the other side of the postcard. So, postcards are a great source of both an interesting design, and they're usually a little bit heavier weight card stock, so they make a great cover. Now, you can use other kinds of postcards, like advertising postcards. This one is just from my like county recycling. I'm not sure I want this as a cover. It's kind of boring looking, but you can always do all kinds of things to change the paper before you cut it up. You could use paint markers like these. You could use washy tape or stickers. You could collage over top of this. And that way, you're using this kind of heavy cardboard to make the cover, but you can do more interesting things with it. Okay, so that's one set of recycled paper we're for sure going to use. Another one is some security envelopes. This is one of my favorite art making supplies. So these are just regular, like, business envelopes that I got bills or statements in. But if you open them up on the inside, they have these great black and white patterns. I love to use these patterns for all kinds of art projects. If you don't want to stick with just black and white, I also add a little color to this one. This was one of these paint markers, which I didn't like quite as well because it kind of made the paper a little bit ripply. But the thing I really loved was I just pulled out a piece of chalk. And added some color over top of it with the chalk. So you can still see the pattern through. You could also use watercolors or colored pencils. You could add all kinds of color to these. So we're going to use these recycled security envelopes to make one of the other designs that we're going to do, which are these little notebooks that have a little origami butterfly on them. So I used a colored card stock, which I'll talk about in a minute to make the covers for these, but then recycled paper to make the little butterflies. These butterflies will also work in any kind of lightweight paper. So magazine pages or like some decorative, wrapping paper or scrapbooking paper would also be a great choice for those. So those are the two kind of recycled papers that I'm for sure going to use in my examples. Now we'll talk about some of the other papers you might need. So for all of my examples, I made the covers out of some lightweight card stock. Now, you could find recycled sources of these, but I just pulled some out that I got at the scrapbooking section of the craft store. You could also get card stock like this at the art supply store, like drawing paper. It's just a little bit heavyweight, and so it'll make a good cover. For these, I have both a smooth paper and then this yellow one has a little bit of a linen texture on it that I'll use for one of the projects. So I've just got sheets of those. This is great to use up scraps from sheets of paper like that if you have a bunch of scrap booking or other kinds of papers. Okay? So a heavish weight paper to make the cover. I'm going to set those aside. And then you need something to go inside your notebook. And I think this can be a really fun source of different kinds of papers. So whatever the pages are that are inside. So this one has just got plain white, like drawing paper in you could use all kinds of things to make the inside pages. So you can work from any size paper you have. So I could tear a few sheets from this other notebook and have, like, a colored lined paper would be a great one to use. These pieces are from a coloring book I got at the Thrift store. It had only been colored on, like, a couple of different pages. And so I cut up all of the pages that were still blank, and I'm going to make one of my books using coloring book pages. They're blank on the other side, or at least some of them are. So that you can write on the other side so we could use this notebook several different ways. You could use some graph paper. Here's two different examples of graph paper that I have just scraps of that would make a great inside page. This one's kind of a newsprint, and this is like a green engineer's paper or ledger paper. And then finally, you can use Plano copy paper. So when you're thinking about your interior paper, you want something that's about the weight of photocopier paper or printer paper, a little bit lightweight. If you use anything that's too thick, it's going to be hard to punch the hole through that we need to. So thinking about a lighter weight paper that could make your inside pages. Okay. So we've talked about all the different kinds of paper that we're going to use. Now we need to talk about some tools that we'll need to create your notebooks. So first one is a ruler. I really, really prefer these metal rulers. This is like a stainless steel ruler. It has a cork back on the back of it. You don't need the cork back if you've got one that's just metal, but we're going to use this as an edge that we cut against. And so it works a lot better than a plastic ruler, where you can kind of kick that with your razor blade and stuff when you're cutting paper. So this is my favorite kind of ruler. Speaking of blade, you will need some kind of a razor blade. This is my favorite. I have this little folding utility knife, which I love to use for my book binding because it's got a nice big handle. It's easy on my hands. You can also use a regular exacto knife. You could use a rotary cutter blade. You could even use scissors, if you want to. Whatever cutting tool works for you, you're just going to be cutting sheets of paper. You will need a folding tool of some kind. So I have a bone folder that I like to use. This is a bookbinding tool that's just made from some kind of horn or bone. If you don't have one of these, don't go out and get one. You can also use a popsicle stick. It makes a great substitute bone folder, especially for the project that we're doing where we don't need to fold a bunch of pieces of paper at once. So a bone folder of some sort. You will also need a tool for poking holes. So in bookbinding, I use a bookbinders A. This is what mine looks like. It's a stainless steel one, so it's really sturdy. I've also seen ones with wooden handles and then it has a really sharp point on it for punching holes. This works great if you have one. Again, don't go out and get one if you don't have one because the other thing that works really awesome is just a little push pin. So you've seen these for bulletin boards. I got a whole container of these just at the office supply store, and I use these all the time as kind of a quick and dirty all for punching papers. So a push pin like this is going to work great. I like these, especially because it has a nice handle to hang onto versus trying to use, like, a sewing needle or something like that. Okay? So a push pin or an all, whatever you've got. And then you need something to put your all or push pin into. My favorite thing to use for that this is actually just a drink coaster that's made from really thick felt. Um, and I love it as a punching mat to punch into. You also could use things like corrugated cardboard, if you had some thin styrofoam, anything like that, that will let you punch your all kind of all the way through the paper into some kind of a backing. Okay? Then a couple of last things. You'll need just a little bit of thread to tie together your books at the top. You can see they've got a little stitched binding there. For all of my examples, I used some pearl cotton embroidery thread. This is what I love to use. This right here in my hand is a size eight. You could also use a size five for this. Size five is really common to find at places like Michael's and craft stores. Size eight is a little bit more it's a little thinner, but you could also use embroidery thread. Bookbinders use waxed linen thread all the time. Any kind of a nice, sturdy, smooth thread is going to work great for this. Um, you want to make sure that it is small enough that it will fit through the holes that you all would make. So trying to use something like Baker's twine or a yarn probably is too thick. So think something that's a little bit thinner. You'll need a needle that your thread can fit through. This is just a small tapestry needle. It has a blint point and a big eye, so it makes it easy to thread. And these you can just find in the craft needle section. Bigger ones just like this are used for darning and knitting and that kind of thing. So I've got a needle to do my stitched binding at the top. And then last tool you need is a glue stick. We're going to use a glutick to put together the layers of our collaged covers. I like glue stick because it stays pretty dry, and so this won't cause your paper to ripple up. And that's kind of a problem with liquid glue is that your paper will kind of ripple when it's wet. So glue stick, I like better for putting together these kind of projects. And I have just a couple other things here we talked about before. I've got some paint markers and some chalk if you want to add some more color and design to your recycled paper and kind of make it look more fun. All right. That is all you need to create these projects. So if you want to gather up your materials, find some recycled paper, we're going to start in the next lesson creating our cover first. So the first thing you'll need is that piece of heavier paper like the scrapbooking card stock or something like that, and we'll create our cover kind of template to get started. 4. Creating the Cover: A Okay, we're going to start by cutting the cover paper for our notebook before we decorate it. So our finished notebooks for this class are going to be 2 " by 3 ". I decided to just pick a size. You can change the size for these anyway that you want to with one little caveat, which is your notebooks can't be much thicker than these that I've made. These are an eighth of an inch thick that will accommodate the pages. If they get too thick, it's really hard to do the stitch binding at the top. So you could make yours wider. You could make it taller if you want to. You can use up a special piece of paper or something like that. But for these examples, we're going to make a book which finished size is 2 " by 3 ". Okay? So the first thing we need to do is cut a strip of paper, which is 2 " wide, and it needs to be at least say, 7 " tall. So I could cut this out of this piece of card stock either way because I have an 8.5 by 11 piece of card stock. So I'm just going to cut a long strip from one side. The way that I like to do this is I'm just going to measure over from one side. Now, if you're using recycled paper that might not have a square edge, the first thing you might want to do is just cut a new, like, clean square edge. I know that mine has a really good straight edge. So I'm going to measure over about 2 ". I'm going to make a tiny little mark, and I'm going to do that in three different places down the edge of my paper. Then I'm going to line up my ruler. My little trick with these rulers is I'm going to flip it over and put the metal side down. The reason I do that is the cork has a little bit of thickness, and so if I put it with the cork side down, it sits a little bit off the paper and I like it to sit flat down. So I'm using it the opposite way, I guess, than they intended. I'm going to line up my edge of my ruler with those three marks that I made. I'm sure those are hard to see on camera, but you should be able to see what I'm doing. I've got it lined up there. I'm going to open up my cutting blade here and I'm just going to cut the whole strip all the way down. I now have a two inch strip of paper. So this one for the cover needs to be 2 " wide, and it needs to be six and five eighths inches long. Okay? So be sure to look at your ruler for a second. I'll put a close up photo of that up on the screen. But you're looking for six and five eighths. So that's going to be right here on my ruler. That's the five eighths mark. Okay. So I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to mark starting at one end, and I'm going to go six and five eighths. Because this is really narrow, I'm just going to make two little marks this time. Okay. I'm going to line up my ruler again. Oh, I just saw my paper twist. I'm going to double check that again before I finished cutting. I wasn't holding it quite firmly enough down on my cutting map. Okay, now I have the correct size for my cover. So this is 2 " wide and six and five eighths inches high. To kind of finish up the cover, we are going to score some lines. We're going to make some folds so that it will fold around the pages that we're creating. So kind of when I open this up, we're going to make two little lines that are going to make the crease that goes around the end of the book, and we're going to do two lines at this edge that'll make the crease that goes around this end of the book. Okay? So we're going to create four scored lines. Going across the book, starting from one end. And if you have a directional pattern or something like that, we're going to start from what will be the front cover of the book and we'll measure across. So my front cover is going to be here, and the little tab that goes around the top of the book is going to be on this side. All right. So here are the measurements, and I will put these up again on the screen. I'm going to do these one at a time. Okay? So first measurement is going to be at two and three quarters. So I'm going to line up my ruler and I'm going to mark two and three quarters. These little pencil marks will be easy to erase if you can still see them. You could also do this on the inside of your book. Either way. Now I'm going to line up my ruler. Like, so on those two marks. And this time, instead of cutting it, I'm going to use the edge of my bone folder to score this line. You could do this also with lots of different tools. I've often used a knitting needle to do this, but I'm going to use the pointed edge or the sharper edge, and I'm going to draw a line but using my bone folder. I'm just pressing hard. What that's going to do is it's going to make a little dent in the paper. Hopefully you can see that a little bit. It looks a little shiny camera. That's going to help it fold exactly there where I need it to. Okay? So that's the first mark at two and three quarters. We're going to make the next mark an eighth of an inch away. So we're going to do the next one at two and seven eighths. So I'm going to take my ruler, lay it down again. Two and seven eighths, which is really close by. An eighth of an inch is a really narrow bit. Okay, so I got my two marks there. Lining up my ruler. Again, the point of my bone folder makes a little crease right there. I've got my two marks here on the left hand side. Now I'm going to make two mower over on this side. So my next two marks, the first one goes at five and seven eighths. Five and seven eighths. It's almost at the end. Five and seven eighths. Lining up those two marks. Scored that line, and then last measurement is at 6 ". And at six. So those pairs of lines are just an eighth of an inch away from each other, and that's going to form the two ends of our book. Okay. So your cover is now cut and the lines are scored to help us fold in the next step. So I don't actually pre fold this quite yet because I like to work with creating the designs on the cover before it's been folded. So I'm going to leave it flat, but know that I have these lines here that are ready to be folded. So in the next two lessons, we're going to talk about the ways to decorate your book. So I'm doing two different versions in this class. So we'll first talk about cutting down and using a stamp or the artwork. Um, from a postcard to create your decorative cover. That'll be the next lesson. And then the following one, we're going to talk about how to cut paper and make these little origami butterflies. You've got two different options for how to design your book. 5. Cutting Postcard Covers: I Okay, for this first version, I am going to use the stamps from these postcards to make a cover for my book. So I'm going to cut a piece and I'm going to open this one out so you can see that just covers the front part here of our book. And so I want to cut it so that it just fits in the section of our cover that's in front of that first scored line that we made. So I'm going to need to cut a piece that is 2 " wide and two and three quarters inches tall. Um figuring out how to cut it from your postcard is kind of the creative challenge. So I'm going to start with this one. So the stamp I want to use is this cute dog face, and I need to make a couple of design decisions here. Now, part of the stamp or whatever your design is on the cover is going to tuck underneath that front flap. So you can see that you lose about a quarter of an inch because that tucks in to close the book and hold it closed. So when I'm thinking about how to cut this dog, I don't actually want to have this be the end down here because then I'm going to cover up part of my dog face. So I'm going to cut mine so that the dog is kind of like here on the book. I think that's my strategy. So the first thing I'm going to do is cut this down to 2 ". Now I can grab my ruler and kind of see. I think this stamp is just a little bit narrower than 2 ". That's great. So I can kind of just make a choice about where I want to have that centered and how much I see of the other things. I like this kind of scrappy version where we're going to see some of the text and we're going to see all kinds of different things. You can also add things to this if the parts of your postcard that you don't like, you could cover things up, for example, on this one. This end here had kind of an ugly postmark. And so this is just a piece of washi tape. Um, that I put over top of it because I thought it was really pretty with the stamp, and that part kind of tucks underneath the flap there. So I might use a little washi tape on this version, too, because I think we're going to end up getting part of this ugly part where the address is, and I think I'm going to cover that up with some washi tape. So first thing, I want to trim this down to 2 " wide. So I'm just going to make a decision. I think I'm just going to cut it about there. And this is a great place to use a cutting mat. If you have one with a grid on it, can help you make sure that you're cutting it kind of square and not crooked. So I'm going to line up my postcard with the grid on my cutting mat. And I'm going to push that over just a little bit so I can use the line. First to cut this edge. So I'm going to cut this edge first. Okay, so I've got a left side of my cover, and now I want to make this 2 " wide. I'm just going to make some little pencil marks, so I can do that. So that's going to be about there. And two inch mark there. All right. Same thing we did before. I'm going to line up on those two marks. You could also use the marks on your cutting mat to help you cut 2 ". Okay, and I'm going to cut that. Okay. So that's a pretty good width, I have some kind of cool stuff. I like that it says hello. Now we need to cut this to height. The height of this needs to be two and three quarters inches. Once again, I'm going to measure and mark. So two and three quarters. Yep, I'm getting just a little bit. I just covered up my address on these since they were going to be on camera with a little white sticker. Okay. Two and three quarters. Okay. So this is going to be the decorative cover for my book. It's going to fit like this so that the flap covers up a little bit of this and not part of the dog. I like the part of this that has the text on it. I'm not wild about this where I've blacked out my address. So I'm going to grab a little bit of washi tape and just cover that up. It could be a sticker. I could use paint markers, I could do any kind of thing, just to make that part of the cover a little more fun. Alright, there we go. I covered up kind of the boring part with the sticker and the address. I found some cute black and white washi tape. Okay, so now I have this piece that's going to fit on the cover of my book. I'm going to cut one more so we can do a couple of examples here. So I got this one kind of squared away, and I really like this stamp here. That's this year of the snake. It's got a little bit of sparkle on it. But there's a lot of fun stuff going on here, so I'm actually going to cut this one going the other direction on this postcard. So I'm going to use my mat, again, to help me line this up. So it needs to be 2 " wide. And this time because there's a lot going on in this postcard, I'm just going to use the lines on my cutting mat to line up at 2 ". Okay. So there's 2 " wide. And let's see. I now need to pick two and three quarters inches piece of this. So I'm going to kind of cut it out of the middle a little bit. So I think I'm going to cut one edge right here to start with. And I'm just going to trim that first, and then I will decide where the other edge needs to be measure. So I'm going to cut off that part of the postcard. Great. And then I'm going to measure two and three quarters inches and this one I'll mark with my pencil because my mat doesn't have quarter inch markings on it. So two and three quarters. A little bit harder to see. There we go. Okay. So this one is fun already. The person who sent it to me put a little bit of washi tape. It's got the date and the weather on it. So I'm not going to do anything extra to this one. I think it's really fun. Okay? Now we're going to add these decorative covers to our cover paces that we cut. So they are going to go on the flap and that's longer. So we've got a short end. We've got two tiny lines there. We've got the piece in the middle, and then there's a flap that's the long side. This is going to be the front of your book. So I'm going to line up this and glue it to the front of the flap here. So this piece should fit right here. And I want to make sure that it doesn't go past where my scored line is so that I can still fold the cover right there. Now, keeping in mind, again, whatever end of the decorative piece you put here is going to get tucked underneath the flap. So I'm going to let this part be tucked underneath the flap up here that has a little bit of the airmail sticker on it. Okay? I'm going to put some glue stick on the back. One little trick with glue stick, and I'm going to grab just a piece of scrap paper so I don't get glue stick all over my cutting mat. I like to when I put glue stick on, make my glue go in a starburst pattern. So instead of just putting the glue on every which way so that you get some on the front side of it accidentally, I always take the glue and I work towards the outside edge. You can see I'm just going every time to the center and then pushing towards the outside. And I'm going all the way around because I want to make sure that I get every part of this covered in glutick and then I'm going to pick it up and I'm just carefully aligning it side to side with the tip, the edge here. Okay. And then the very best thing to do with this is to put a weight on top of it and let it dry for I don't know, 20 minutes or an hour or so. Any kind of a weight is going to work great. I have some book weights that because I do a lot of bookbinding, this is just like a cardboard box that has some heavy it's nails and screws in it. You could use a book, a can of soup, anything like that, but I'm just going to put that on top, and I'm gonna let that dry with the weight on top of it. Okay? And then I'm going to glue this guy down, too. Let's see. I'm gonna this be the outside. I'm going to put it facing this way. No, actually facing this way because this end, again, is going to be the one that tucks underneath the flap. I want that to tuck in at that end. I'll grab my scrap paper again and I'm going to put glue on the back here. Okay. That lining that up with my scored line and all the insides and outsides of peace. Looks great, and I'm just going to actually stack that up underneath my weight so both of those can dry underneath the weight while we move on to the next lesson. So in the next version, I'm going to show you how to cut the paper and make little origami butterflies that could be an alternate way or even an additional way. You could add a butterfly to a stamp piece and also make an awesome cover design. So next lesson, we're going to work on butterflies. 6. Folding Origami Butterflies: All right. Let's make some origami butterflies. I cut two more cover pieces like so. This is actually that county postcard, which I decided to just cover with some washi tape and some marker. So I'm going to use that for one of these and then a solid colored one. And to make our butterflies, we're going to use the recycled security envelopes. So, I am going to cut a piece to make my butterflies out of, and I'm going to use this part that I colored with chalk, and then I'll do one in just plain black and white. So first thing I like to do when working with a big piece like this is to just kind of rough cut it down. We're going to need a piece that is 1 " by 1.5 ". So a very small piece. So I've cut one good line there, one edge. So I'm going to come over and cut that an inch and a half wide. And for this one, I can just use the grid marked on my cutting mat. I could also measure it in pencil mark it. I'm just going to use the cutting mat. So that is 1.5 " wide. And then it just needs to be 1 " tall, so I'm just going to cut a little section out of the blue section there that I colored with chalk. Okay. There's 1 " and then 1 " wide. So these are tiny little pieces. Okay, so there's a blue one, and then I'm just going to cut another one from a section that's just the black and white here. So you can kind of see both ways. You are going to see both sides of this piece of paper, so you might glance at the other side of it as you're cutting, just to see if you have any postmarks or anything. Both of mine are nice and plain white, but you might have other markings on the back of your envelope that you might want to cut around. I've got my two pieces that are 1 " by 1.5 ". And we're going to Origami fold this. So I'm going to zoom my camera down on the screen here because this is pretty tiny. And you have one design decision to make here. So it's really clear to see on this one, where the colors are really distinct. You are going to choose what color is the kind of accent color on the inside of the wings? That's the white here. And what color is kind of the main color of the wings that'll show up as the outside of the wings and the little bit of body that shows there. Each of those is one side of the paper. So when you start this out, the side that you're going to fold in when we make our very first fold in half, whatever ends up inside is going to be the accent color here on the front part of the wings. Okay, so this first one, I'm going to fold so that the blue is that inside color. Okay? So our first fold, I'm going to take my little tiny piece of paper, and I'm going to fold this matching the short sides. Fold it in half. Oops. Stuck to my finger there and flipped over. So I'm going to fold it in half. I'm matching the short sides. Okay. I'm going to give that a little crease. You can use the edge of your thumbnail. You could grab your bone folder. You want these to be pretty sharp creases because this is a really tiny model. Okay? Now, we fold it in half now the short way. We're going to fold it in half one more time, again, matching the short sides. So both layers of the paper, I'm going to bring short sides over to short sides and fold it in half. I'm going to grab my bone folder this time so I can really get a nice sharp crease. Okay, so we've now folded it into this teeny, tiny thing in quarters. All right. Next, we're going to make what is called a squash fold in origami. We're going to pick up the top flap. It's actually two layers of paper, but we're opening it up like a book, picking up that top flap, and I'm going to get my finger in between the two layers of paper. You can see like that. When I do that, I push them apart. I should be able to take this little folded part and I want to push it straight down. If I move my finger out of the way, you're going to see how that makes a triangle. Okay, so I'm just pushing on the fold of paper right here, pushing it down towards the table so that I can flatten out that triangle. And you just want the fold of the triangle to match the fold underneath. So it's not tipped to one side or the other. Okay? And once you have that triangle kind of set, I'm just going to press it down, and I could take my bone folder again and kind of crease each edge. Okay, so we made one squash fold. Now we're going to do that again on the other side. So I'm going to flip this over. I'm going to pick up this flap again and kind of stand it up. I'm going to work my finger in between those two layers of paper to open it up. And now I'm pushing on the fold down toward the table so that I can make that little triangle and squash it flat, and it should match the one underneath. Your two triangles should stack up one right on top of the other. Our last step is we're going to open up the wings. And to do that, I'm going to reach in. I'm going to start on the right side in between the two layers of paper here, and I'm going to kind of take this front piece and I'm folding it towards me. And you can see it's at a little bit of an angle because we're going to squash this again. You can see there's a little part that's sticking up right here. We're going to do the same squash fold, but we're going to do it slightly unevenly this time. So that our top of our wing is at a little bit of an angle. And you can decide what angle you squash that at. You can push it a little towards the top. You can push it a little towards the bottom. Once I've got that, you can see how that side kind of looks like a butterfly wing. Okay, we're going to do the same thing on the other side. I'm going to pick up the top layer. I'm going to fold it, bend it towards me. And as soon as I see this little flap sticking up, I'm going to squash it down. And I just am trying to make it match the other side. So my other side, there we go, came down just a little bit farther. There is your tiny little paper butterfly. So on this one, we put that blue inside when we did the first fold, so the blue ends up being the accent color on the wings, and the rest of it we're seeing the back of the paper. Let's fold one more together, so we've got two butterflies. This time, instead of putting the patterned paper on the inside, I'm going to put it on the outside. So I'm going to flip it over. So my first fold, I'm going to fold it in half, matching short sides together. Okay. Like so. I'm going to fold it in half again, matching the short sides. Short side to short side. Okay. I'm going to open it out like a book. Open that top flap. I'm going to put my fingers down in between the two layers so that I open it out, and that lets me take this flap and push, push, push it down and make a squash, squash fold. Okay, then I'm going to flip it over and do the same thing. Turn it the other way. I'm going to take this flap, kind of stand it up, put my finger inside and open it. Try to move my hand so you can see that. And then I'm going to push on the point right here so I can push, push, push, push it flat. Okay. It looks kind of like a little arrow, little heart. Now I'm going to open the wings out. I pick up the top flap, and I'm just kind of rolling it back towards me. And then this little part that's sticking up, I'm going to squash down. And that makes one wing. Then we do the same thing on the other side. I'm picking up the top flap. I'm just folding it back towards me when I see that little curve pop up, I'm just squashing it down and just trying to make it match on both sides. Then I'm going to just give this a little crease with my bone folder so it lays down as flat as possible. I'll do that with the other one, too. Just so those folds are good and creased. Okay, there are our origami butterflies. I'm going to zoom my camera back out again. So now we can add these to our cover pieces. So I didn't score these ones yet, I realized, but we're remembering that our cover is kind of one third of the edge here, so I want to put my butterflies on that third. And you can think about whether you want your book to kind of be vertical like this when you're looking at it, or you could think about it being horizontal. So that will determine where you put your butterflies on the cover. So you could put one. You could use both. I think I'm going to put one on each. I'll do the black and white one here. I'm going to do the solid colored one first. My scored line when I put it in here is going to be two and three quarters inches over, so it'll be about there. I'm going to make this one be horizontal because all of my other ones I did vertical, so I'm going to make this be a horizontal one. I'm going to put the butterfly kind of down in this corner. Remembering that about a quarter of an inch of this flap is going to get covered up by the top edge of our book. So I don't want to put it so close there that it's going to get caught in the flap. Okay? So I'm going to put my butterfly about there. Again, I'm going to grab a little scrap of paper. I have some extra postcard here. I'm going to put glutick on as much of the back of this butterfly as I can because I really want it to stick down very well. Okay. Got it all the edges and put it about right there. Sometimes with these, this top flap pops up and you might need to put just a little bit of glue underneath that. Sneak it down underneath. Then again, these are going to stick, much better if you put this under weight for a few minutes. I'm just going to sneak this one in underneath our weight. Like so. And then let's see. I might do this one horizontally, too, actually. So I want to pick a spot where this butterfly is going to show up, maybe against the black, kind of up here or my tape is coming up there. Maybe I'll put it down here. Kind of in the same spot on both of these, I guess, right? One more time, put some glue on the back. You could also use double sided tape for this, but I like to get as much of the butterfly glue down as I can. Okay. The. Adding to our collage, I have one little wing, both wings actually that are popping up a little bit. I'm going to sneak a little bit of glue underneath them. I think it didn't want to stick to the washi tape quite as well as the cardboard. Okay. And again, I'm going to stick this underweight and let it dry so nothing pops up and it gets really well stuck down. I'll just hold that one up close so you can see made a wild and crazy cover there. Okay. Underweight. You want to leave those covers underweight for a few more minutes, maybe 15 or 20 minutes to make sure that all of the embellishments you added are really well stuck down. In the next lesson, we're going to talk about cutting your inside papers that are going to go inside the notebook. 7. Cutting Pages: Okay, it's time to do our inside pages. So we talked about there's lots of different kinds of paper you could use for the inside pages. I for sure want to do one with coloring book pages because I think this would be really fun. You could color on one side and actually write notes or something on the other. So I'm going to use that, and I think I'm going to do another one in graph paper, so we can just cut some up while I kind of talk you through it. So our inside pages need to be 2 " by 3 ". That's the finished size of our book. And these books that we created will fit between about 12 and 14 pages. So you'll need to cut 12-14, maybe 15 rectangles that are 2 " by 3 ". Now, everybody's going to have a different sized piece of paper, so you can decide how to use your paper most economically. I'm going to measure these pieces I have. So this is not quite 5.5 " by seven. So I can get it looks like two across and two down, so I'll get four sheets out of that. This one's just about the same size. So I'm going to try to do that, which means I won't have quite enough pages. Maybe I'll put in some just plain white ones, too. You can stack up your inside pages and cut a couple at a time. The more the thicker your stack of paper, kind of the less accurate your cuts are going to be. So usually I don't do more than two pieces at a time. I'm going to go ahead and cut these two coloring book page ones together. And again, you can either use a cutting mat because 2 " by 3 " is a really easy measurement to cut using a cutting mat and a ruler, or you can measure and make little marks with your pencil. I'm just going to use my ruler and the marks on my mat. So let's see. That's 2 " wide. Right there. Okay. I'll cut another two inch strip. Okay, these ones are too narrow for this, so I'm going to set that aside in my scrap paper kind of file, and then I I'll make these be 3 " high. Get them kind of lined up a little better. And let's see, one, two, three, So Okay. So there are two pages. I cut just a few more here. And there's another two by three. You could also tear these down if you know how to tear down paper. In another one of my classes, I show you how to tear down sheets from a larger one, and you could do that for this project as well. If you don't like the ruler and the razor blade method. Okay, and one more here. So I will have eight sheets of this one of the coloring book pages by the time I get done here. So I need just a few more to go in here. Alright? I'm just going to continue cutting, but I'm going to speed up the video because this part is really straightforward. You don't need to watch me talk through cutting all of these. So I'm going to cut enough for two more books, even though we've made four covers. I'll just cut two more on camera so you can kind of watch as I do that. I've got two stacks of paper to make two books. They have about 14 sheets in each one, so there's enough to do two. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to put the books inside your cover and how to stitch all the layers together to finish up your book binding. 8. Putting It All Together: Okay, time to add the pages. So I've sorted my pages out into stacks. I decided to just kind of shuffle them together, so these alternate with coloring book and blank pages because I thought that would be fun. And so I'm going to do two books, one of each of the covers that we did. I'm going to start out with this one with stamps. And the first thing is, I want to make some creases along those score lines that we made. So I like the best way I like to do that. We want these folds to fold towards the inside. So I'm going to put the inside of the book up and I think it's a great idea to use either your bone folder or your ruler to help kind of make these folds end up straight and where they belong. Let me move these papers over out of the way. And so I'm just going to lay my ruler one more time against that score line that I can see. And then I'm going to pick up the edge of the paper and just gently sort of bend it up along that score line. And you can also grab your bone folder if you have a thick piece and kind of run it along the edge of the ruler. I'm just going to work my way down and do that on each one of these. So that's the next score line. I'm going to pick it up. There really is not a lot of distance between these two lines. That's why I think the ruler helps with this step is that it holds down the rest of the paper. So I've got those two folded, then I'll do this pair down here. Line up my ruler. I can pick up this whole big flap this time. Okay, and then one more line. Right there. Again, kind of carefully picking it up and folding. I just need these to be kind of started, and then I can reinforce them, put a sharper crease in them. I could go over them with a bone folder. These look pretty good. So I get an idea. This is what my finished book is going to look like, the little flap and it should tuck in underneath the top there. Okay, we've got our creases in place so we can see the shape the cover is going to be. I want to open it out flat one more time because we need to mark where we're going to punch the holes on this top flap. So I want to make sure that I'm looking at the outside of the book, and I've got it open, so I'm looking at the top flap. And we're going to make two little dots so we know where to punch with the all, and they are going to come in a half an inch from either side. So I'm going to come in half an inch from this side and a half an inch from this side, and they're going to be one quarter of an inch, no more, a quarter of an inch from the first fold. Okay. Grab my pencil. I think it helps to line this up with the grid underneath helps me keep things straight. I want to make sure that I come a quarter of an inch down from the fold. I'm going to line up my ruler. I have a half inch line marked right here on my cutting mat. I'm going to line up my ruler with that half inch. Now I'm coming in a half an inch from the side, and I'm measuring from the fold line. This is the farthest out fold line. I'm going to measure just a little shy, maybe 3/16 of an inch. I don't want to go more than a quarter. I'm going to put a little dot. Then I'm going to do that on the other side. I'm going to line it up a half an inch from the edge. And just shy of a quarter, maybe go to 3/16. There, I'm going to hold this up close so you can see my tiny little pencil marks where they are. Okay. Now I'm going to put the pages in the book. So I'm going to grab my stack of pages. I am going to take a second to just make sure that they're lined up as close together as I can get them. So I want to make sure that this whole edge, they're as, like, as straight as they can get at that edge because that's the edge I'm going to put in the fold of my book. So I'm going to put that edge that I really got straightened out at the top, lining it up at the bottom of my fold marks. So that when I fold my cover over, they are tucked down as far as they can get down in the cover. I can see mine aren't quite there yet. I'm actually going to stand this up and push them down. They are right down as far as they can get in the corner. I'm making sure that they're lined up side to side. I'm just pushing on it with my fingers. Okay. So I've got all of that as aligned as I can get it. I know some book binders like to put a binder clip on this at this point. I'm just going to hold on to this one with my fingers, and I'm going to set this whole stack making sure I don't scooch anything around. I'm going to set it down on my mat, I'm going to punch two holes, and I'm going to punch all the way through the entire stack of paper. Through this top flap, through all the paper and through to the bottom. It seems like this is a lot of paper to go through, but if you have a nice sharp all, this isn't hard to do at all. So I'm going to put one right there. I'm going to put all basically straight up and down as much as I can get and just give it a nice push until I can feel it's gone all the way through. Okay. Got two holes punched and I'm just going to double check. Yeah, they're all the way through to the backside. Awesome. I'm going to set that down a second because now I need to get some thread to bind together the top. I'm going to use this turquoise color. Because this is a little bit thinner thread, I'm actually going to double mine up. If I were using a thicker thread, I would only use one strand and I'll grab my needle. I'm just going to thread this through and I'm going to double mine up. Okay. The stitch for doing this is really, really simple. I'm going to pick up my whole stack. I'm going to try not to get them out of alignment. I'm going to go down from the top through one hole. I'm going to come up through the other hole. Then I'm going to tie a square knot. I'm going to just snip the end of this so that I can put my needle aside. Then a square knot. Okay. There are several ways to remember how to do a square knot. But the one that I learned that I remember is I'm going to start with the thread that's in my right hand. I'm going to take the right hand thread and go over the left one, so it crosses over and then put the ends through the loop that ties one half of the knot, and I'll pull that right down tight against my book. That was right over left. My second knot, I'm going to start and go left over right. My left hand one is going to go over the right thread. I'm going to tuck the ends in and pull it tight. I'm going to pull mine tight in a couple of steps here because it gets a little bit loose. So I'm just holding it with a finger while I pull on the top part of it. You might get someone else with a finger to hold your knot so you can pull it tight. They don't have to be super tight as long as it's got a stitch. You could put one more knot there for security to make sure it doesn't come undone, especially if you have a slippery thread, and then you can trim the tails however you like. And that is the whole binding for your matchbook style book. Then the last little bit to finish it up is your cover wraps around like this and there's a little flap, a little overlap in front that you can just bend the cover back and it should tuck right in the top of your book. There's our border collie, our puppy dog version, and we'll do one more since I have it here. Okay, so I'm going to first crease those score lines on this one. They're harder to see on this because this is a thicker piece of paper. I might actually just bend these from the front side because I can't see them from the back side. But even though I'm bending it the wrong way, it'll be easy to see then where they go, and I'll transfer them to the other side. So I'm just going to start the score here, kind of bending it the wrong direction. I could also use a pencil and transfer the lines to the other side so I could see them. There we go. See, now I can see where they are on the back side, because I've got creas elines to follow. If I can get the light to hit that, there we go. You can see them. So now I'm just going to do the same thing from the other side now that I can see where the lines are supposed to go. And it should fold pretty easily now on those lines. Okay. I'm just going to flip this around because I think it's going to be a little easier to see. One more fold. This is a much thicker piece of card stock. So I am going to take the bone folder and just reinforce those folds a little bit. Like, make them a little bit sharper before I put my book together. And there. There we go. Okay. So I've got my cover kind of all put together here now. I need to now make marks so that I can punch those holes, which is going to be a little bit hard to see on this black washi paper. So I might actually use I have this little this orange marker, and I think I'll use that to make my marks so I can see them. I just need a tiny dot. Okay, so I've lined it up against my cutting mat one more time, and I'm going to measure a half an inch in from the side using the cutting mat, and then I'm going to go a quarter of an inch just a little shy of a quarter of an inch from that outside fold, that's going to be about there and same thing on the bottom side. Dot that worked actually pretty well. I can see those really easily on the black. Stack my pages really well. Okay. I'm going to tuck those in the top, the short flap and wrap around them and then just double check it that I've got them pushed up in there as far as I can get them, and they're aligned side to side. Okay, two holes to punch. I'm going to do this one with a push pen just to show you. So one pushing down. And there's two. Punch all the way through. It was a little bit thicker paper, so harder to do. Alright. And let's see. I have some orange. I'm going to use the orange thread on this one, kind of a variegated thread. I'm going to do the same thing and double it up because this is a little bit thinner thread. Alright, now we're going to tie a square knot again. So our square knot we remember to do, we're going to go right over left and then left over right. So my right side piece is crossing over the left one and then tucking in to the middle, and I'll pull that tight and then kind of hold on to it with my finger. And now my left hand piece in that hand goes over the right one. Tuck it through. Okay. And then get somebody to hang on to that for you or you can pull it tight and kind of hold it with one finger and pull the other one tight. Ooh, knot got a little bit loose. I might pull it out and tie it again because mine's got a little bit of a gap there. Okay. Once you got your square nut, you can trim the end. Like so. And then we'll close this one up. Again, I'm just bending the cover slightly so it'll slip underneath there, just like a matchbook. And I guess the butterfly is right set up there. So here are our two don't forget your challenge is to make a notebook. So I'd love to see what you decide to recycle, whether it's a postcard or some security envelopes. Maybe you'll do both and put a butterfly on top of another one. I'm going to finish up these, too, so I can add some pictures to the class so you can see how those turned out. And I hope you had a great time making recycled paper matchbook style notebooks. 9. Wrap Up: Alright, don't forget your project for this class is to make your own matchbook style notebook using whatever awesome recycled materials you can find. So be sure to post a picture in the project section for this class and let us know what recycled material you used, and what are you going to use your notebook for? Um, I keep one like this in my knitting bag so I can make sure I know what row I'm on or if I need to have a stitch count on something. I also have another one that I carry in my tote bag that I have every day for writing down things like great books that people tell me about or podcasts that I should listen to. So there's lots of ways that you can use these tiny little notebooks. I hope you had fun with this class, and I can't wait to see what you've created.