If you write a story for someone else it can help your writing. First of all, if you have someone in particular in mind it makes it easier to find the right way to tell the story. Secondly, writing for someone else keeps you motivated. If you plan to write a story as a present (parents and grandparents will say that a homemade present is nicer than a bought one) it is a good idea to make it into a book to keep.
1. Make
a hand-stitched book
2. Make
a Folding Book (with video instructions)
The way I’m going to describe first produces a neat, strong little book that will sit on a bookshelf and survive being read over and over again.
To make an A5 book you will need:
– A5 card for the covers (thin card is
fine and mount board is best)
– A4 marbled* cartridge paper for the endpapers (trim edges by 2mm
on each side so that the endpapers sit inside the covers. Or you can use
patterned paper or wrapping paper cut to size.
– A4 paper for the book pages – this needs to be trimmed down
by 4mm on each edge so that when you read the book each page is framed
by a narrow border of the marbled endpaper. The number of pages you need
depends on how long your book is. Each sheet makes four sides in your finished
book. More than four sheets becomes difficult to stitch.
– A pencil
– A ruler
– A needle and (unwaxed) dental floss – the thin sort.
– A compass (the kind with a sharp point not the kind for finding
north!)
– 4cm sticky binding tape.
*If you decide to use marbled endpapers you need to do this the day before so that the ink dries. You can buy marbling inks from craft stores.
How to make a hand-stitched book:
Fold the endpaper sheet in half as accurately as you can. Place the opposite corners on top of each other and line up the edges carefully before you make the crease. You need to fold the paper with the pattern on the inside.
Now fold the pages in half, taking the same care to be accurate, and tuck the booklet inside the folded endpaper. Make sure you have a sharp crease and make sure the pages sit neatly inside the endpaper so that there is an edge of pattern showing all the way round the outside of the pages when opened.
Hold the pages in position with four paperclips.
Choose a starting point on the inside page a couple of centimetres down from the top and make a light mark with a pencil. Measure and mark two centimetre intervals down the inside of the spine until you have between three and four centimetres left to the bottom of the page.
Now take your compass. Please be careful with it – it’s sharp, which is why it’s useful to us here but you don’t want to stick it in yourself. Place the folded, paper-clipped pages spine down on a soft surface like a piece of foam or an old cushion. (Again not your Gran’s favourite cushion because you’re going to stick a compass in it.) Carefully push the point of the compass through the pages where you have made your pencil marks.
With the holes in place it is easy to stitch the pages. Thread a big-eyed needle with a length of dental floss two and a half times the length of the spine. Start at one end and sew through from the back and in a running stitch down the spine. When you get to the last hole go back up to the top ending up with the thread on the outside. Tie the two ends together – get someone to put their finger over the knot so that it’s tight otherwise your pages will work loose. You can take the paper clips off now.
Pull out a length of sticky binding tape and place it sticky-side up on a flat surface. Hold it down at the top with a ruler. Leave a gap the length of your book cover and place another ruler at the bottom of the strip of tape. Using the rulers as your guide carefully lay the covers onto the tape so that they are straight and there is a neat 5mm gap for the pages.
Put the stitched pages carefully in place and glue down the endpapers making sure that you push the centre fold well into the spine of the book.
If you want to you can add a bookmark or tapes to tie the book shut – just glue in place beneath the endpaper.
...That’s it – you’ve made a book!
