Hello!
Welcome to another Smiling Colors video!
This is Smitha here today showing you how you can make a book at home easily.
Once you have this technique figured out you can make a bunch of these mini notebooks at
once.
Today I am making books that measure about 4.25 by 5.5 inches in size, they are called
an A6 sized book.
This size is a cute size for a journal or notebook and perfect to carry around in your
purse.
To make a book you'll need: A glass cutting mat, some sheets of paper,
a stapler, a dish towel, a bone folder, a retractable or exact knife, a ruler and a
sheet of cardstock.
You will also need an adhesive or glue and optionally a paper trimmer.
Don' worry if you don't have all of these exact supplies, I'll give you options of
what you could use instead during the tutorial.
We first start with the paper.
I am using paper that I usually feed in my printer- an A4 sized paper that measures 8.5
inches by 11 inches.
You'll need 5 sheets of paper and you'll need to cut them in the middle.
I am using a guillotine paper trimmer to cut all of my 5 sheets at once.
You'll need to make your cut at the 5.5 inch mark.
You don't necessarily need a trimmer for this, you can use a large pair of scissors
instead to cut the sheets in half.
You won't get such a straight cut if you use the scissors, but in the end we will be trimming
the edges so it wont make a big difference.
Okay so now we have the two halves, lets stack them together and that makes 10 sheets of
paper.
Fold this stack of paper into half to make our book.
In bookmaking terminology- this is called making of a signature or section.
You can make bigger books by stacking many such signatures together.
But that's for another day.
Today lets go ahead and crease this fold neatly using a bone folder or simple the side of
your thumb.
You'll notice that we don't have a neat edge here- we will need to trim that off later.
Now to hold all of the pages together we are going to use a stapler.
you need to be able to open your stapler by holding the base firmly in one hand and pulling
the top of the stapler up.
Staplers are often used in this position to tack papers to posts or bulletin boards.
Don't mistake this for the opening of the staple tray.
I'll link to the stapler model I used in the description below.
Place your kitchen towel or any scrap fabric down onto your surface.
Open the book with the center fold on top of the kitchen table.
Next, open up your stapler, position it to be on top of the crease and press down.
We'll add two staples to the center of the book today.
Lift the book up and you will find that it's got stuck to the towel but you should be able
to easily separate the towel.
Now using your bone folder close the staples down by pressing them carefully.
The kitchen towel works great here but you could also use an old stack of magazines beneath
before stapling.
Don't staple the book directly on a table, the book will get stapled to the table and
leave a mark.
Don't ask me how I know this.
Now onto our cover.
Trim a piece of cardstock to measure 5.5 by 8.5 inches.
Fold this in half.
To glue the book inside the cover I am using a tape runner adhesive today.
This one is permanent one and holds great.
Simply add adhesive to the inside fold of the cover, line up the book inside and press
down firmly.
Next align your book to the grid lines on the cutting mat, place a ruler on top of the
book towards the edge.
Press down firmly on the ruler with one hand and then using a retractable knife in the
other hand go back and forth along the ruler multiple times to cut off the excess paper
and create a smooth, uniform book edge.
Next turn the book 90 degress and repeat the same process.
You may not always need to trim the top and bottom edge of the book.
But if they do not look neat, its quick to use the retractable knife and trim it.
I love how neat the edges become after cutting them so.
The notebook looks perfect and store bought literally.
I made a whole set of these notebooks and in my previous video I show 6 fun ways to
decorate the covers.
Make sure you check out that video by clicking the i in the top right hand corner here.
Now a few tips that I learnt while making these books:
A glass cutting mat is great to have.
While trimming the edges off of the book, we repeatedly cut the same line and this will
ruin your table otherwise.
To trim the book use a wide blade - a sharp utility knife or something like this.
Yo can try using a craft knife and even a smaller exact knife but I found that the utility
knife gave the best results.
The ruler you use also makes a difference.
In my video I used this narrow ruler, but later I found out that a wider sewing ruler
is much steadier to hold in place.
I used a tape runner to adhere the book to the cover, but you can always use a liquid
glue instead.
If you use glue, let the book dry for a few hours before trimming.
Now if you don't have a stapler that opens to the tack position, you can use a needle
and thread to stitch book in the center.
This is very easy to do and I've shown this in a previous video of mine and I will link
to it below.
And that brings us to the end of this video!
This video was jam packed with tips and mentions of other videos and you can find all of that
information and links on my website smilingcolors.com.
Make sure to stop and say hi to me there.
Click here to subscribe to my channel, click here to go to visit my website and click here
to watch my all time most popular video which features a bookbinding technique!
I hope you have a great day and as always happy crafting!
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