Make a Little Book of Birds - a Beginners Class Combining Easy Bookbinding and Collage.

1. Make a Little Book of Birds Introduction: In this class, I show you my process of using collage to make a handmade book that you can fill with collaged birds. Hi, I'm Helen and I'm a lifelong artists and maker from the UK. And I believe that creativity isn't all about fancy materials and the latest equipment. I believe that we can all create with everyday, simple, easily found materials. My work has always stemmed from the love of materials and processes, and collage and assemblage have always been my favorite ways of working. Collage and assemblage of always featured in my work. And I love using materials that other people perhaps wouldn't consider unusual materials. So quite a lot of my canvases have got unusual found objects buried in them. I find that using abstract painted papers and liberating way to work. When I'm painting the papers, I'm not worried about the end result. I'm just having fun putting paint on paper. I enjoyed the happenstance and the happy accidents. In this class, I'll show you my process of using collage to make a single signature book bound with a three hole pamphlet stitch, which I then fill with collaged painted paper birds. I discuss the materials I use. I provide templates to guide you and there's an information pack for your reference. Let's get cutting and sticking. 2. Project Overview: In this class we'll be using easy bookbinding techniques combined with collage to make a little book of birds. I chose this project because I love to reuse and recycle, and collage and assemblage and bookbinding, favorite techniques of mine for many years. This project uses easily found materials. I talked you through the process step-by-step and offer alternatives along the way. I'll walk you through the process of making the book using a three hole pamphlet stitch. And then we fill it with collage to birds. I'd really love to see your little books of birds. So please do share them with us here. Just click Create, Project button to upload your photos or videos of your finished little books of birds. Let's start making our little book of birds. 3. Materials: To make the little book of birds, we're going to need a collection of paper. The paper that I've used in this book is actually from a cut down notebook that was that I had picked up at a scrap store. But you could use any paper at all. I like to save the paper pages out of old notebooks. Notebook pages. Any paper you would like to use, you can use regular printer paper. Should you wish to cover the book? I've used painted paper. This is my favorite, which is painted newspaper. Newspaper, just paint on some textured. That's for the cover of the book. For the birds themselves. I decided for this one I was going to do black and white goods. So I've got a collection of black painted papers. That's what I've used tonight. Of course, we're going to need glue for this. I use irregular Pritt Stick, glue stick. And glue stick will do also have some PVA glue. Using PVA, I like to push the brush to add some more to keep your brush wet. And any glue will do my favorites or stick and PVA. To the book. Together. I've got some bits of finding the equipment. I have a book binders, all which is what I make the holes in the spine with. This is a sharp, pokey implement. You could use a needle, you could use a skewer, whatever you've got to make a hole in the spine of your book. I'm stitching. In this project, I use this linen thread. Various other. Then in my collection. I've also used string to bind to iBooks. You want to go down the colored version. Regular embroidery thread works very well. So the book, I have collection of needles. I've got some big donors. Whatever works for you. Think needles would be the ones that you would show up knitting with. That sort of thing works very well. Thread on some bookbinding equipment. To decorate the front of my book. Name. My book. I used some rubber alphabet stamps. These in the UK. I got these from hobby craft. They came in little living collections like this in a small box. For ease of use. I've put them into a little tray that I made from balsa wood. And I've just got a couple of alphabet sets here, and I've used that to print the name of my book. This is just a little ink pad, probably again from hobby craft, the range. And I've got black ink. But you could use if you would like. These alphabet stamps are available in lots of different craft stores and shops. So for my book, I've used alphabet stance and an ink pad. The cutting and sticky. We also need a pair of scissors. I use a craft knife to cut. So I use a metal ruler, a cutting mat, and I've got a retractable blade, knife. And finishing off the details on the birds, on collage birds, I use a white posca pen and I use a 0. I told you the wrong way because I'm left-handed. I use a, my favorite is 0.8 Uni pin pen, but this is a permanent black line. Fine liner pen. Again, whatever you have to have. All the equipment that we need. 4. Pages and Cover: So today I'm going to make a little notebook and I'm using these pages that are, as you can see, it's half half of a notebook or part of a journal that I picked up from a scrap store, local scrap store. But you of course can use any paper that you have to hand. So I'm just counting out the pages that I want to use. This book has got brown pages and they've got whitepages. Just tear the pages. And I'm just going to measure them and see what's the biggest size that I can get to maximize usage of these pages. I'm aiming for a square book for this project. So I just need to measure the length to work out how high I want to make it. It's Paypal will give me pages of around about four-and-a-half inches square. So making sure that they're nice and square. Trim them to regular sizes. So just being very careful with your cutting knife and lining them up and making them square on the cutting mat. Nice and square now, all even sizes individually folding them in half to make the pages for my notebook. Make sure that each of the folds are nice and crisp. And that one's reject because it had a little tear in it, but I get to use it later. So I've got white ones and I've got brown ones. And I'm deciding that the pages are gonna go alternate colors. So I'm just slotting them in. White brown, white brown. I'm saying white. It's more of a creamy color. And that will form the signature for my notebook. Those are the pages from my notebook to the cover. So I'm using the rejected page, the one that was slightly torn. I've cut a piece of painted newspaper slightly larger than that page. And I'm just putting some glue on jm using PVA glue. Any glue will do. So very carefully. Paste the paper, stick it on, smooth it down. I've put it between a couple of pieces of paper just to try it. Flat a little bit. Trim the corners off, and paste the flaps. Folding them over, leave it to dry. It dries flat again. And then finally cut a piece of paper to cover your flaps. So I'm just trimming it nice and square of a sticky patch on that. So I've got a piece of paper that fits on the back there. Again, paste the paper carefully glue in place. And again, leave it under something heavy to dry flat. So that's gonna be the cover of my book. 5. Binding your Book: So here we have the cover. It's nice and dry and flat. And I'm just going to fold it in half. Creasing lay along the folded edge. You could choose a paper folder if you wanted to, but I just find that my hand is enough. The next stage is to attach the signature, the folded pages skinned to the cover of the notebook. And I'm gonna do this by sewing the signature into the cover. I'm just collecting the I need so I need a needle. This is in my little handmade needle holder. Need to make sure I put a needle. I've got a sharp implement to make the holes, and I've got some thread to stitch width, so I'll put brown thread here to make the holes. I sometimes I measure, sometimes I don't, It's up to you. But here I'm going to measure where the holes are. I just want to have a bit of an idea of where the center hold this. We're going to do the three whole pamphlets. I need to find the center hole and then we'll measure an even distance either side effects central hole. So we've got three holes in the fold of the pamphlet, of the notebook. With the book binders. I'm going to make the three holes. Now, if you don't have an old, you can use any sharp, pokey thing that you have to hand, a darling needle or a skewer. You could use a similar thing from a woodworking toolbox. So there's woodworking, anything that will make a sharp, sharp, that will make a whole. If you've got old style set of campuses, the point on the compass is sharp enough to do this. If you want to start making notebooks regularly than a book binders, all is a very useful tool to have. So I'm just measuring. So I'm just measuring 3 cm either side of the center hole. And that's where I'm going to do my number two and number three whole resting the book and they all flat against the cutting mat. I'm sliding, wiggling a hole in the spine by going horizontally, not poking down. A little bit of recall, you do get the coming through the fold of the notebook. Always remember to protect the point of your all the signature. We need some thread. And for three whole signature, you need three times the height of the book in measure three times the height, and cut the length of the thread accordingly. You need a needle. Thread, your needle. And I'm going from the outside in. That will give my threads on the outside. So find the center hall and parse your needle through the center hole into the middle of the book. Keeping a tail on the outside. Back out through one of the holes all the way over to the other end. Whoa. Going back into the book. And then back out through the center hole. Now with this going back out through the center hole is good idea to hold onto that tail thread. You don't split the thread. Before I tie this signature, I want to make sure that the thread is evenly distributed through the, through the spine. The tails are of equal length. So I'm just having a bit of a wriggle around, making sure that everything is nice and tight and lay flat. With this three whole signature. You have one big stitch on the outside and you put the two tails, you want to make sure that each tail is coming either side of that one big stitch. And I tend to use a, I think it's called a reef not so I tend to do a leftover right and underneath and a right over, left and underneath. And dressed for luck, I do a third, not going back to the leftover, right and underneath. So I use 3 kt to secure that signature in place. But you'll notice that now we've got the pages sewn in. The pages do kind of stick out a little bit further than the than the cover of the book. So I'm just going to mark it in pencil where the cover goes. And I'm going to trim the pages so nicely. Folding the cover of the book back and letting the TBA go over the edge of my table here. I'm lining it up on the on a cutting mat. It's just the pages that I've got held between the cutting mat and my ruler. And I'm just going to trim those pages where I marked them to make sure that the edges of the pages are all nice and straight. And that looks much better now. So the pages are within the cover of the book and nice and straight. Is no, the pages we saw earlier. The other thing I'm going to do right now is I'm going to add some decorative knots to be tails. Now I quite like having the tails of the thread dangling. So I am just for a little bit of detail, I'm adding 3 kt on the strings. So 3 kt on each of those two tails. You could use beads, you could make paper beads. You could do whatever you want. You could trim them. You could make it put up a bow there. You can, you can decorate that how you want or you can just leave it be just a little bit of textual detail. I'm having 3 kt on each one of my tails here. I'm just going to trim them a little bit shorter, so it's not so much a tail sharing. There we have it, our book with the pages all stitched in. 6. Making a Collaged Bird: For this project, I wanted all of my chickens or birds to be black and white. So I've got a collection of papers which I've painted with black paint. I'm using chickens that I've drawn in my sketch book as inspiration. So to start off with, I'm just going to quickly cut out pieces. The painted paper, roughly about the same size or a little bit smaller than the page size. This is going to form the body of my chicken. I tend not to draw my trip and shape first. Cut shape. And that way the character of the birds develop and each one will be slightly different. But you could use the birds that I've provided in the supplementary materials. You could use those as templates or guides. Or you could draw your birds onto the paper first before you cut it out. So I'm just cutting out the rough shape. And as you can see, it does get adapted. And I do a little bit more trimming. It develops. I just trim as I go adapting it until I'm happy with the basic body shape. Now we're using painted papers. Each one of your birds is gonna be completely different anyway, because the marks on the paper are all going to be slightly different. So that is my basic bird body shape. So I'm not going to have a look at making some tail feathers. I'm having a little look, see whether I like different parts of those different planes. Painted papers. Quite like lines. On this section here. I'm cutting out a, it's going to be a sort of an elongated triangle shape to make the tail feathers. And I get the rough outline of the block, first of all, trimmed to how I like it. Before then cutting into make the feathers themselves. I just cut long cut marks 20 over, putting in, trimming out that little elongated triangle. Just to make some indication of tail feathers. Just rounding off that final one. I'm quite happy with that. So I'm just going to have a look, see what it looked like. Oh my God. Yeah, I'm pretty pleased with that one. Using a cover from a magazine as a glue mat. Some print stick glue. You can use any glue. Of course. I'm just going to do a slightly attach the tail feathers onto the body of the bird. He's not gonna be attached onto the page at this stage, but the tail is attached to the bed. So the next thing I want to do is I want to make a wing. And again, using as sort of elongated, rounded triangle shape, I'm just going to cut a bit of a wing shape. Actually for this bird, the wing does kind of disappear into the texture of the body of the bird. But you could, you could make yours a little bit clearer and a little bit more obvious than when I've decided to do here, but yeah, I'm, I'm quite happy with the outcome. Is going to glue it into place. The next element we're going to do. I'm just going to round this. Head off a little bit more. I didn't quite like. A little bit pointy. The next element I'd like to put on this bird is I want to put some head feathers on. So I'm just going to cut out. Again. We're going for that sort of rounded triangle fan shape to start off with. I'm cutting a block shape. First of all, this is little bit more fiddly, but I'm just going to nip, nip in and cut feather shapes into this block of headphones. As you can see, it's just coming together now. Just gently trimming feather shapes. I think I'm reasonably happy with that. Just rounding off the edge a little bit more. And that will sit on top of the bird's head. So those are all of our basic elements. Now as you can see, you can attach these, you can attach them at different angles and that will give different characters to your birds. Have fun with with how you, how you want your bird to look. I'm just going to attach that to the back of the head. And so all of those elements are all together in one piece. The body, the tail, the wings, and the head feathers. Now that I can glue the whole thing in place onto, to go onto the page. So you have to be very careful with this. It's a little bit delicate at this stage. Individual feathers can easily break off. So just take your time when you're gluing this. And if it does break off, then is any paper cut another one or just stick that feather or whatever that's come off back in place. Gently centering it on the page, smoothing it down. You may find that, as in this case, some of the ends of the tail feathers hadn't quite gotten off glue. So just make sure all your little edges and ends of all got enough glue and it's all holding down nicely in place. There's a bird on the page. Now, I need to add a little bit more detail to make it look like a bird. So I've got a little white posca pen here. So this is a permanent acrylic marker pen and I'm just going to make a little eye shape. I do the eyes first because then that gives it time to dry before I go back to add the detail to the eye. So with the eye in place, I can now make a beak with a fine liner, black Uni, pin pen. You can use any pen that you'd like. Pencil, crayon, whatever, whatever you've got to hand. I'm just making a beak and then adding on some legs. I do my legs very simply. Just keep them fine and fill out the lines very gradually to give them a little bit more substance. So I tend to do fill in a little bit more around the ankle, feet just to give it a little bit more substance. And then I'll do a little tiny waves triangle to indicate where the legs are attached to the body. That's our bird. The eye is now dry. The white of the eyes now dry. So I'm going to just add with my black pen, I'm just going to add a pupil. And I'm just going to gently just define around the outside of the eye with the black pen. Let's my first chicken done. 7. Printing the Title: So we've made our little book now and now we're going to title it. I have got some paper. You're going to use some recycled round paper here. And I'm going to have stamp the name of my book. This is the little book of birds. And so I've got an ink pad here, and I've got some letters, stamps that I bought from hobby craft in the UK here, but I'm sure you can get these anywhere. Any craft or art store will have individual letters, stamps. You can write your name on. You can title of your book however you like. But I'm just writing these words on here by individually stamping the letters onto the brown paper. Now as you can see, I'm just putting the words on. I'm not arranging the words on this brown piece of paper because my intention is to cut each of these individual words out and glue them onto the front of the book. So I'm just literally putting the words on. I quiet like the quirkiness of the upside-down Z formation of the letters. That doesn't worry me at all. If you want things a little bit neater and a little bit more in line. And obviously you need to take your time and make sure that there's stamps if you're using them, are nicely lined up in level, but I quite like the quirky quirkiness of the upside-down Z words. I'm just going to cut out these words. Who's going to cut the strip and trim them pretty much evenly as much as I can. And then the words get trimmed a little bit more because they cut into individual words. We have a little book of birds. We're ready to glue that onto the front of the book. You can play around with the arrangement of these words however you would like. I'm just trying Lee in the center, do I like that? Do I like it going diagonally across? Or I could put them one side or the other. Have a little play with the arrangement. I'm favoring the center the center line. But it's whatever is pleasing to you, It's your book. Decision made. It's going in the center. So I'm going to actually use the cutting mat here, the grid on the cutting mat, to just let me know where the center is, the center line. Pretty much whether the bolder line on the cutting mat is it's giving me guides but without drawing it onto the cover of the book. So just with a regular glue stick, but you can use any glue you like. I'm just going to put these words onto the front cover of the book. Starting with the top word. I'm putting little on there to make sure that these are pretty evenly spaced on the cover. I'm now putting birds on. And then you can glue the other two words on pretty much evenly within that center space. I just found that easier. It's easier way to do it for me. The final word, the off, just going in that space there. We have it. There's the title page, the cover of the book. I finished. I'm going to keep the end pages lung, the first and the last page blank. The other pages, I'm in the process of filling with different sorts of birds, all using the black painted paper. Little book of birds ready to fill up. 8. Final Flip Through: Here's the final version of my little book of birds, filled with 16 birds made with black painted paper. But I've also got here another book to show you that I've filled with colored birds. I hope you have fun making your little book of birds. 9. Conclusion: How did you get on? I'd like to thank you for coming on this creative journey with me and I hope you've had fun along the way. We've reminded ourselves of the joys of cutting and sticking. I'm looking forward to seeing all the photos of your makes. I'd love it if you could follow me on Skillshare here and leave a review. You can follow me on Instagram where I share some of my creative projects. And if there's one thing I'd like you to remember from today is that cutting and sticking is fun.