Tiny Printable Blank Books

I needed a very, very small TARDIS-looking journal for a project I'm working on, and thought I would share how I made it, and how you can make other tiny blank books, with you.

These books are fairly to scale for a Barbie-sized doll. You can use them as doll accessories, or as gifts for a book-obsessed friend (I have many of these), or just leave them for people to find in odd places, whatever.  :)


Supplies needed:

White cardstock
Printer paper
Printer
Glue tape or glue
Marker that matches the color of the book you want to make
Ruler or straight edge
Small pointy object (I used a push-pin)
Scissors or exacto knife (a paper-cutter is handy as well, if you have one)
Print-out of book covers
Print-out of book pages


Step 1: Download the book covers and pages using the links above. Print the book covers out on cardstock, and the pages out on regular printer paper.

Step 2: Cut out your book cover along the printed edges. Cut your book pages into long, thin strips (this is where a paper-cutter is helpful to get a nice straight cut). There are two sizes of book, large and small. Choose a strip that matches the size of your book!

Step 3: Flip your book cover over and, using your small sharp object such as a pin and a ruler, score along the fold lines. You can fold without scoring, but this gives you a much cleaner edge. Fold the top and bottom tabs over first, then the side tabs. You may need to trim the sides of the tabs a bit so that they sit flat and the white doesn't show when looking at the front of the book. Once you have that folded to your satisfaction, you can put a bit of glue on the side flaps to hold them in place.

Look carefully to see the score marks on the back of the book cover.

Step 4: You should be able to see where the spine should go by looking at the flaps inside of the book.Use your straight edge to score the two lines of the spine , and fold upward. The cover of your book is almost done!

Score and fold along imaginary red lines.

Step 5: All this folding may be causing a bit of white to show through at your creases. You can color the edges and creases with a sharpie that matches your book color to disguise this. Or, leave it as-is for a weathered appearance.

Yum, marker smell!

Step 6:  Fold one of your page strips, accordion-style, to create the interior of your book. For super-straight folds, I again recommend scoring lightly before folding. Check to make sure your pages fit inside your book. If you haven't folded them PERFECTLY even, that's ok... just trim off the top and bottom of the folded pages. 

Step 7:  Run a strip of glue along the interior spine of your book cover, and the outside flaps of your pages. Carefully line up the pages inside the book cover and press in place. And there you have your teensy tiny book!

Book covers included in this tutorial:

TARDIS journal
The Neverending Story
A City With No People
The Big Peruvian Book of Small Peruvian Snakes
A diary
Mr. Bunnsy Has An Adventure
Handbook for the Recently Deceased
Pretty blank book

I most likely will make some more when I have the time. Let me know if the comments if there is anything particular you want me to do!

A whole library, right in your hand!

Prop Making 101

Ok, I'll be honest. I never thought of myself as a "crafty" person. I'm much more of a engineer by nature. That being said, I've been mulling over the idea of a few costumes for ECCC 2k13. One of which needed some props. I scoured the internet looking for the 2 things I felt I would need to add to the costume. One I found easily, the other was either non existant, or you had to buy expensive ones that people had made. Then I stumbled upon the necessary data and blueprints to build your own.

Follow me through this new frontier.

I decided the best way to make this would be to craft the prototype out of styrene. Styrene is what makes styrofoam, but there's almost no air in it. It's flat and hobbyists love this for building things. After doing some research, I went to the local hobby shop and gathered my supplies.

For this project I used:

1) Hobby Mat (there's a lot of cutting and I am not buying another 20 dollar Ikea coffee table)

2) X-acto knife

3) Some sort of square preferably metal (as you can see I bought plastic)

4) Styrene sheets. 1.5mm (1), 1.0mm (2) and .75mm (2)

5) Ambroid Proweld. This stuff is amazing. Takes 10 seconds to "weld" the plastic together

6) X-acto compass cutter 

7) White plastic hobby putty

8) Sandpaper

What you will do is start by measuring out what you will need to create the pieces. The first piece was a rectangular shape for the grip. The great thing about styrene is that you just have to score the sheet and bend it and it will give you a good clean line. However, because of the plastic square, my lines were crooked. Mainly because I kept cutting into the square with the knife. If I had to do it all again (and I might), I would use a metal ruler and a pencil. Measure several times, cut once.

Once you have your pieces, line two of them up as you want them and add some Proweld to the joint. Hold it and count to 10. It should hold. Add a few more passes with the weld just to make sure. 30 min later I had something useable.

Just look at those sexy legs.

From there I measured end pieces and attached those. That wasn't easy. First off I noticed that my sides were not the same length so it took some time shaving them down. Then I had to make many passes to keep it secure.

This particular prop needed a grip on the handle, so I used the .75mm styrene to craft the additional pieces. The finished result is below. 2 sides had the cut out and the other two were flush. Again, my hastiness led to crooked edges. This will require sanding and putty to fill in the gaps.

Finally I had to work on the top piece (pictured below) It's a type of trapezoid, one side is at a sharper angle than the other. It was getting late and I wasn't very focused so this piece doesn't look that good. It will require a lot of clean up work on the edges and the bottom features some gaps in the plastic that will require putty to fix. 

Stay tuned for the next installment when we bust out the compass cutter and putty.

Can you guess what this is?