Tutorial for an Interlocking Accordion Fan Book.

These mini books are a great quick make for christmas (and numerous other occassions.......). You can put one or more together in a couple of hours.  As has been already been noted they would hold seed packets, recipes, ATCs to name but a few, have fun!

Supplies

2 sheets of 12 x 12 double sided cardstock sliced into 10cm x 30cm (4” x 12”) strips

Coordinating 12 x 12 sheet for book cover

Coordinating cardstock for embellishment and tags

2 of 10.9 x 15.2 (41/4” x 6”) Chipboard or board book for book covers

Double sided tape and glue

To make me

1. Select one strip from each of the different papers, cut them  down from 30cm (12”) to 22.5cm (9”).  Score these pieces of paper at 1.25cm (1/2”) from either end and at the centre point to give two 10cm (4”) squares (left picture).  Score the remaining strips at 10cm intervals (4”).  So you should have 2 pieces like the picture on the left and 4 like the one on the right.

 

2.  Taking your first 3 matching strips. At the midpoint of each 10cm square make a cut from the edge to the centre (5cm or 2”) from the bottom.  Attach the 3 square strips along the tabs using glue or double sided sticky tape. Repeat with the other strips of paper but this time make your cuts from the top to the bottom. N.B. Be aware of directional paper.............

    
3.   3. Interlock downward cuts with upward cuts (you may need to reverse your folding at this point to make it work.  It will start to look like this:

When they are all interlocked you will be able to fold the whole thing flat from each end.

4. Working from the bottom, and ignoring the first piece of paper i.e. selecting only 2 pieces either side of the fold staple about 2.5cm (1”) from the edge near the top. You will have 7 stapled pockets on each side.

5. Taking your choice of paper for covering your chipboard, cut 2 rectangles 13.4cm by 17.5cm (5 ¼ ” by 7”).  Apply glue or adhesive to one side of the chipboard and centre on paper (you will have a ½” border all round).  Cut a diagonal at each corner as shown leaving a small gap to the edge of the chipboard.

Apply double sided sticky tape to all 4 sides and wrap to cover, then  use a coordinating (in my case the reverse leftover piece)  cut two 9.5cm by 12.5cm (3 ¾ “ by 5”) rectangles, cover in glue and centre to complete cover. I use a bone folder at each stage to make sure the 2 surfaces are well adhered.

6.  After deciding which cover is the front and which way round you want your ‘pages’ to face.  Apply adhesive to the top surface of your pages.  Align the bottom of the pages with the base of the cover and centre before adhering the 2 surfaces. Apply adhesive/ glue to upper surface as shown in left picture  centre top book cover over bottom cover (check that you can’t see any of the inside) then adhere together. 

     7.  To finish cut a strip of coordinating paper 10.9cm by 7.5cm (4 ¼ “ by 3”) and score in 1 ¼ “ from either end (approx 3cm) to leave a ½” spine. Glue down aligning book cover edges with edges of score.  Decorate and embellish your book as you want :)

So for your chance to win the above book leave a comment before 8th December, winner will be selected at random and announced on my blog.

 

WOYWW - 77 a mini surprise giveaway

Good morning lovely people.  Have you had a good week? Ours has been a mixed bag, it is all going well with Timothy in his cot converted to bed form, we put him there and he stays although yesterday he 'need truck' this thing is nearly half as big as him, so I snuck it back out once he was a sleep.  On the downside someone threw a full bottle of Groschl through our kitchen window smashing it, (we are a ffirst floor flat so unlikely to be random) we were out, with friends babysitting, so that was a crap end to the evening. Anyway enough rambling thank you for all your lovely comments last week, the papers are this years and last years Imaginesce, polar expressions (2009) and Christmas Cottage (2010). So here's the thing - Julia, I do have a finished book to show you but after some thought I decided to go a stage further.  I will show you shortly the finished minibook - then later this week I will post the tutorial I have written to make your own.interlocking accordion mini. It will be my first tutorial and if you leave me a comment then I'll enter your name into a draw to win the very mini you see below (winner announced in 2 Wednesdays on Dec 8th in WOYWW 79). What's WOYWW where have you been all this time, there is a link on the right head on over and start the journey of a lifetime..........

Enough procrastinating without further ado...............

I used the same idea to produce a holder for some pockets to make a year planner for one of my lucky relatives :)

So if you want the christmas book check back tomorrow night onwards and leave a comment for a chance to have it all to yourself.  Happy Wedneday

WOYWW 76 - 2 ATGS (don't shout)

Ok ok ok, the more eagle eyed among you spotted that hey - there is a logical reason honest.  You buy an ATG for yourself and figure you'd get your mum one for Christmas because she would find one useful too.  So you set your own up as a 6mm, buy the adapter thingy and ship your tape in from the states because you can't get it in the UK.  Then it turns out your ATG tape is better than your doublesided sticky tape at sticking chipboard to paper - all of a sudden you are going through 6mm tape like it is water through your hands or money through a crafting person (ha ha) so then you have an inspirational idea - you have already got your mum more than agreed budget so run her ATG gun with the 12mm tape which you can get here in the UK and therefore buy in much smaller quantities.  So then you have 2 ATGs that you are using both very helpful in their own way - see (my mum's bestmate has ended up buying her one for Christmas anyway when I told her about them!) - well they are on sale at the moment. Simples see!

Right so workdesk space thingy.

My workspace is a hive of Christmas activity - it's ok after bonfire night now :) I'm making some lovely quick album thingies that were inspired by a Laura Denison design and in the back is a card - I'm mainly a Lavinia stamps kinda girl, the father christmas stamp was a gift from a friend of my mums when we went to the NEC so I wanted to make her a card to say thank you.  The houses were stamped with versafine black, coloured in with promarkers then coloured over with a viersamark pen before being clear heat embossed so that I could brayer over the top. Moon was made using a post it note mask. One desk not enough then head on over to the Queen of it all at the Stamping ground and find 2, 3 or probably a hundred and something more!

Now for those lovely few of you who have been following T exploits.  Climbing on to the chest of drawers turned very quickly into a bid for freedom and so the cot has been converted into its bed form.  So far in 2 nights we have had 2 nights slept through and it only took us 45 min to get him to stay in bed and go to sleep (the first night we kinda cheated he fell asleep in the car when OH took me to my scrapbook class and didn't wake up until the morning........)  So it is bye bye lovely 2 hours afternoon of freedom nap time but hopefully he will now sleep through the night.  I really must post more often so that these WOYWW don't turn into a tome.  Have a lovely week (can't you just spot I've have more sleep recently!)

WOYWW 75 - reorganisation

Where to start this Wednesday morning.  Sleep deprivation has been high on our agenda still.  I think it has been cold related but OH and I have been woken up or kept up too many times to count by the 2 year old terror.  Yesterday through his choice not mine there was no afternoon nap (I went into his room to discover he had climbed out of his cot on to the chest of drawers (which is above the level of his cot.......) pulled down the curtain rail and was proudly declaring mummy mummy).  However last night we ALL slept through the night - I'm sure many of you have been there where young person sleeps through and you lie awake at the times they have been disturbing you for the last for rthe last however many weeks. Please let it be over and normal sleep resuming.  Then however many weeks (think it is being counted in days now)until Christmas - it's ok bonfire night is over now we are officially allowed to start thinking about it. I get a debtors letter claiming I owe £90 to Orange from 2007 -n what I want to know is as I have lived at this address since way before then why oh why is this the first I have heard about it (and I haven't been with Orange for a good while).  Lastly there was my trip to the NEC which was a lovely if not elbow bashing day out toooooooooo many people.  Yet I was disappointed I think maybe because the needlecraft section was in the craft section this time the papercraft etc section was much much smaller.  Good deals on Martha Stewart punches but then I couldn't remember where I had seen them all and soooo many people (I don't really like lots of people much happier with a few special ones - you know like you guys) I'm sure I over spent on the punches I got by about 5 quid. other than resupplying my sakura glue pens it was a poor buying session (still manages to spend enough mind you). Is that enough words D???

Anways if your still here I did get a shiny big (much better for chopping 12 x 12 than an A4 mat .................. sorry about that dragged away to put nutella on baby boys (I know 2 is not a baby but he is my baby) toast. Where was I ah yes shiny new cutting mat, however there was no way yesterday I was going to get mat in place with previous chaos so rearrangement time.  Which led to more rearrangement - especially with the curtain pole coming down in the boy's room so I took a mid craft tidy break to sort out and rearrange the bedrooms - I'm sure I am not the only one to be so easily distracted.  Still with the appalling weather it gave me the opportunity to work on the above beautiful butterflies (A Bug's Life is currently no. 1 on T DVD list).  So today the sun is out, there are no packages to be delivered, the flat is in a reasonable state, we may just have to get some fresh air, mind you  that cold has settled on T chest maybe we should stay in the warm and I should craft?.................

What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday

Still here.  Doing a lot of Christmas related stuff and like many others need to keep it away from the lense so people don't end up seeing what they've got before it is given to them!  Managed to fit in some Christmas cards so thought I'd get in while I can.  I have two main requirements this year, cheap and quick.  So it's what I already have or what comes with magazines :). This lot were the result of embossing folders -  I tried the inking trick but didn't like the results. I'm off to the NEC tomorrow (carnage will ensue) and on my list are some gelly pens to put in some colour.

 

Now on the bad news front the interview didn't work out so it is going to be a poor crafting session for me until next May.  On the plus side my Roald Dahl card (see some earlier posts in September) was a winning entry so I now have lots of delightful stuff I probably don't need!! but who cares.  However a trip to Switzerland to visit good friends and their 5 month old baby girl mean all batteries are rechargesdand ready to go. Below is a panarama of the Alps looking across Lake Geneva: