From Paper to Book

I helped make a gift for a friend's 30th birthday. I was responsible for putting it together. I was trying to come up with a simple, cheap but CUTE way to display it. This post is about how to make the book yourself but as a side note, we had everyone send us what they liked/admired about the birthday girl. Who couldn't use a pick me up these days? I think we all wonder what people really think about us and it was a great way to help the birthday girl know how much she is loved. So back to the book...
First gather up your supplies. I used some 12x12 cardstock, some 8 1/2 x 11 cardstock, and two colors of skinny ribbon. You could just use one color of ribbon, whatever your preference is or what you have on hand.I also used some ghetto glue sticks because at first I couldn't find my scrapbooking glue tape. But then I found it, so some sort of glue is needed, distressing ink if you want, and a paper trimmer or scissors.So I cut out all of the thoughts and trimmed around each one. This helped me know how big my book needed to be. I decided to cut my 12x12 paper into 3 strips. Then I cut all of those and then started folding them into thirds.Fold the first one and then use that one to help you make sure you fold the other ones the right direction. Just remember that if your cardstock is textured or has a right and a wrong side to it, you will want all of the right sides towards the front as you glue them together.Okay, so now you have them folded and lined up so the folds are the right direction.Take the end section and line it up with the next one. Put glue on the section that will be on bottom. Then line up the top piece and secure it on there. Keep doing this for the whole book until you have it as long as you need.I went ahead and distressed each of my pieces of words. So do that now if you are wanting to do so. This just helps them stand out a little more and gives them a bit of an edge.Line each of those pieces on and glue them on each "page" of the book.Here is my book all folded up nice and tight. Now how to get it to stay closed and be a tad bit cuter for gift giving....Grab that ribbon and cut 4 pieces off. I think mine were at least 12-18 inches long. Then stick two of the ends underneath the last thought on the last page. If you forgot to do this before, like I did, no worries. Just peel it up a bit, put some glue down and stick them in there. Then attach two of the ribbons to the front of the book with glue, just on the back side of the front cover. Now take the ribbon from the back of the book and wrap it around the top of the front of the cover. I wrapped mine twice around just for dramatic effect and to hold it shut tighter. So the one from the back gets wrapped around towards the front across the cover and then all of the way around again. By the way, I went ahead and put a bit of glue down to keep the ribbon stuck across the front cover. But that is really the only place you can glue it, otherwise you can't open the book. So the ribbon on the front cover gets wrapped across the front towards the right side and then around like the picture shows above. Now you will have two ribbons coming from the backside and two coming from the front. The top two ribbons wrapped the second time will kind of come down to create a "Z" in the back so that you can tie a ribbon near the bottom of the book.
Now go get book making! Super easy and I am sure many of you have scrapbooking paper just lying around waiting to be put to good use!

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