Make Your Own Mini Books!

I have something very important I’m supposed to be working on this week (more about that on Sunday)… so last night I decided to make a mini-book instead. All you need to do the same is one sheet of paper, something to draw/design with, and an idea – mine was a little book of blog challenges for Lola.

Here’s the incredibly simple process (mine was done in Photoshop so had been printed before I folded or cut anything; these instructions assume you’re hand drawing and therefore working with a blank sheet of paper for the first two steps):

1. Concertina a sheet of paper into four equal sized sections; it’s easiest but not compulsory to divide it along the longest side:
2. Unfold the concertina, then fold the same piece of paper back on itself it along the other side:
3. Write/draw/glue your content. With the paper sitting landscape-style in front of you, the top left rectangle is the front cover; the other pages work round anti-clockwise from there. Pages 1-4 will be right way up; pages 5-7 will be upside-down as you look a it:
4. Cut or tear horizontally between the centre four pages:
5. Then you fold the paper up along the creases you made earlier; it will fold into a basic cross pattern. Fold the arms of the cross around until they make a little book like this one:

If, like me, you want to design your book in Photoshop, simply measure your paper beforehand and create guides in your image file to divide it up into eight equal-sized rectangles. Design your book, bearing in mind which images need to be right way up and which upside-down, then print, fold, cut and you’re done!

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