Hey bookish friends,
Today I am sharing these tiny books that I just finished making.
How tiny? How about this tiny…
This is my first project for the Bleeding Art Challenge Blog as a DT Member. This challenge blog is Mixed Media Anything Goes all the time. I have quite a few photos of how these little books came about and how to make them so grab a cup of tea and start reading. If you don’t have time to look at all the photos, feel free to skip to the bottom of the post.
Tiny Book Covers and Pages
OK then, so I recently got Eileen Hull’s new Tiny Book die which of course is for making tiny books so how could I resist. Now I will say that it is entirely possible to make tiny books without this die because all you need is a little rectangle of cardboard to make a cover. Where the die comes in handy, is that you can cut lots of little books from thicker materials and not hurt your hands. Since I have issues with my hand, this is great for me. Also the die includes a few other little accessories to bling up your tiny books and the main book die has scorelines for the spine. I knew this die was coming as I watched a make and take demo at Creativation back in January. Eileen recently had a Release Party for this die which you can also watch on FB. I just checked some shops here and it seems to have sold out! There is also a companion die called Tiny Book Case, which is not a bookcase, but a case like a box envelope that you can put your tiny book into, a bit like a gift box. You can see them both pictured in the photo below.
Anyway, here’s how I made mine. I decided I wanted to make four of them, a little set if you like, and after all my reorganising last week, I decided to keep using recycled materials, and so I cut my four little books out of an old amazon box. You know the ones that are not corrugated but are like some kind of thick kraft and are used mainly for books and not breakable items?
My pages were made from A4 Mixed Media paper that I get from Cass Art, it’s their own brand range and I like it a lot. You can use any paper you like depending on what you want to use these little books for. So as it’s A4 size, I can get three pages from one piece as I cut them lengthwise 7cm wide. This particular paper is spiral bound so I cut the little tabbed piece off. Then using a scoreboard, I switched from metric to imperial and scored my paper at 21/8th, 41/4 6 3/8th, 81/2 and 10 5/8th. Fold them up concertina style, and there will be a little bit left on the end, roughly 1.5cm (1/2″). I kept this bit attached to use later.
Book Cover Decoration
I had already chosen which books I wanted to use, and pulled them off my bookshelves. These books were: Graham Greene – Monsignor Quixote, Janet Lewis – The Wife of Martin Guerre, and two Laurie Lee books – Cider with Rosie and As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. Why these books? Well obviously I have them in my collection and I like them, but more importantly, I thought they had covers that I might be able to draw an approximation of! LOL So I cut another piece of Mixed Media paper and started to sketch out my four covers.
Once I was done sketching, I used a 0.3mm Copic Multiliner to go over all the titles and some areas that were going to be very black eg the bull, before starting to paint in the covers using Inktense pencils and a waterbrush.
I switched to Polychromos pencils to add in more details and then added some Paperartsy Fresco paints, the sun on the Graham Greene cover and all the dress and flower details on the Cider with Rosie cover.
Once everything was dry, I cut the paper into individual covers. Here’s how they look next to their inspiration books.
Inside Decoration and Pages
Now it was time to assemble the tiny books. I was thinking about adding marbled paper to the insides of the book cover but I didn’t have the energy to make any and then I remembered I had these Distress Oxide backgrounds I unearthed during last week’s reorganisation. They’re not marbled but they have the same kind of feel that I was looking for. I cut them to fit the book covers but just drawing around one of the covers and cutting it out with scissors, and then glued them to the insides.
I spent some time painting the outside covers white, in preparation for painting them orange, before changing my mind and just covering them in orange paper! Honestly, talk about how to waste time! Anyway, so now my covers were covered inside and out so it was time to add the pages. Initially I was just going to add one concertina page and glue it to the back cover but then I thought if I add two, then I could glue one to the front and the back and then glue them together in the middle to make one piece. So that is an option but I decided in the end to keep them separate because then I could use front and back of the paper, which I would not be able to do if I glued them together. I could have still made one long piece and just not glued it to to both covers but I really wanted symmetry here. In the photo below, you can see two concertina pieces on the left, they each have that small folded edge facing opposite directions. Glue the left one to the front cover and the right one to the back cover as seen on the little book on the bottom right. They are lined up with the edge of the spine and nothing is attached to the spine itself. This allows room for the concertina when the book is closed.
Here’s another view so you can see what I mean. This reminds me so much of a frog right now lol.
Once the insides were assembled, I glued the cover images to the book fronts and wrote the authors and titles on the spines along with the little penguins. Now, as you can see two of the spines are white and I could claim it was a design choice but actually because I used really cheap orange paper on the covers, two of them tore a little bit and rather than redo the whole thing again, I just covered them with white paper.
Now that I see them side by side I think I might prefer the white spines so maybe it is a design choice after all!
Here’s another view of the concertina pages.
And here are multiple views of the insides in various stages of folding and unfolding.
End of the Tiny Book Tale
And that’s the end of my tiny book tale, all that was left to do was find some tiny bookends for them.
THE END
I hope you like the mini books and that you feel inspired to enter this month’s challenge which you can do by clicking right here.
Let me know what you think of tiny books in the comments below.
Challenges:
Mini Album Makers Challenge – March – extended through April.
PROJECT RECIPE:
Eileen Hull Tiny Book die
Mixed Media A4 paper
Orange paper A4
Nuvo Deluxe Adhesive
Tim Holtz Collage Medium
Copic Multiliner 0.3mm
Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils
Paperartsy Fresco Finish Chalk paints
Inktense pencils
Sakura white gel pen
Winsor and Newton white gouache
From stash: old amazon box, Distress Oxide backgrounds, 2B pencil, waterbrush, glossy paper scraps for spines,
I started something new for April:
Since we are all stuck inside and can’t leave the house, I thought I would try and do two things:
1. use this time to finish any unfinished projects
2. use as much recycled materials as possible (I do this a lot anyway) but also not to buy new stuff!
So, with that in mind, I will note the above on any posts, if applicable.
UNFINISHED PROJECT – NO
RECYCLED MATERIALS – YES (old amazon box, glossy paper scraps, premade backgrounds)
Disclaimer: please note that these books are made just for fun and not for any commercial purpose. Mainly for practicing my drawing skills or lack of them.
I really adore mini’s and these are no exception!