Book folding tutorial: a simple heart / home

So I saw some examples of book folding (from someone selling some books) a while ago and I love the idea so much that I wanted to try it myself. I have clicked on numerous sites and read hours and hours about patterns and inversed letters and all and I’m just going to share a little bit of the basics today.

I found there are two different ways to conduct book folding. The first one is simply with a chart that tells you where you have to measure with a ruler. I’m going to do it this way later on and is method 1.

The second method is actually putting a picture with lines under your page and fold to the tip and bottom of each line. See where I put the pencil marks on the book, you have to fold there.

We’re not there yet though, I also found you can fold in two different ways as well. You can eather fold your page in a 45 degree angle (which I will be doing with the heart because it was shown like this in the instructable I followed), or you can create a notch (with a knife or some sharp object that creates an indent) at a similar distance on the top and bottom pages and fold towards that point. I think this will create an even neater and more even look.

Now let’s start !

What you will need:

• An old book – preferably a hard back because it stands better on its own. Most designs ask for books with 400-500 pages but this beginner’s design only has 40 folded pages so a thin book is fine in this case
• a ruler
• a pencil
• measurements (or a patterned design)

I agree, it’s not easy to ‘sacrifice’ a book but I had a very old copy of a novel (the Cal one) that was a mandatory read in school almost 20 years ago. I think it’s okay to let go now :-). The pages are all yellow as well so nobody would want to read it anyway.

Turn the book so the left side is facing up:

And then you make pencil markings, where you’ll have to fold. Now page 1 is not the first page of your book. You’ll have to calculate (or guess) where you’ll have to start so that it evens out on both sides a little. In this case it’s not hard because you know it’s 40 pages so count the middle of the book and 20 pages back.

You can see here where I put the first marking (in centimeters as this is the metric system here) from the top and the second one (also from the top!). After marking you can fold both in as much of a straight line as possible, or you try the other method where you can fold towards the point where you made an indentation.

This pattern is the easiest there is but Words are harder because some most letters like an R have interruptions and every time a letter crosses more sections on the same line it’ll need another fold on another page, so the page count for your folds increases fast this way.

If you have an inversed heart or other design it is done with little cuts in the paper’s edge and folding it back. I really like the way that looks as well. More for my to do list.

So you want to see the result? Here it is. Not too bad for a first try I think.

So when I finished this I wanted to do another one 😉 and this is how I did Home using the second method :

And the result:

So my experience so far:

• The heart one was quite fun and easy to do! No frustrations here !
• I guess you have to have a lot of patience if you do big designs but you can mark where you ended and restart another day easily
• One of the most difficult things is figuring out where you have to start in a novel with folding the pages. You’ll have to count out how much pages you need before you start and with a graphic design it’s not so easy. And then you have to figure out on what page to start the folding. It must be horror if you’ve been folding for hours and you run out of pages ;-).
• It’s not so easy to find (free) patterns. I found a lot about making your own designs with Photoshop and even in Word and tried some of it out but still didn’t manage to get an actual good design out of it.
• You can find quite a few patterns on Etsy but again, they are mostly for thick books (450-500 pages) and they have to have a certain height as well.
• There are plenty of youtube videos but the best tutorial, info and free templates (also the home one) I found on the site of Scrappy Sticky Icky Mess
• I also found a template for Read and Love on the above site but I’m still troubled with counting out how many pages I need. I think a lot of pages and I don’t have a book now so it’ll have to wait until I find an old novel nobody wants anymore 🙂

 

So what did you think? You like the results of book folding? Tempted to try it out yourself? Let me know!