For all the 'walk down the memory lane'...

Caution : Picture heavyyyyy!!!

Its that time of the year when people are giving/buying, diaries/ journals etc.. Most of the times, i've started off with a full 'josh' in the new diary and lost interest mid-way.. then came the colourful handmade books and i've been hooked to them ever since... Since they were pretty expensive, i used to jus look at them and put 'em back in the shelf and come home.. One fine day when i was bored, i decided to make my own handmade book and from then on, i've been tryin to experiment with these kinda books... 

If you'd like to make for yourself or to gift someone else, here's a simple method :) ... 

Pull out all your artsy stuff and let your creativity flowwww :) ... 

You'll need : 

Mill board ( i dunno what its called otherwise.. its a pretty firm board )

Papers/Sheets of your choice (for the book.. and the no. of papers depend on what you are gonna use the book for.. I usually make a 100 paged one )

Cutter

Steel scale

Glue

Pencil

Single punch ( it'll be awesome if you have one of those cute li'l shaped ones ) :D 

Jute thread/Ribbons/ Coloured cotton twines 

Needle

Paper clamps

For the cover :

You can absolutely use anything! from hand made paper to plain coloured charts to recycled paper to fabric or even make a collage on a plain paper of all your fav things or pictures of you/your friends/family/pets.. absolutely anything!

I chose a white grass paper for the front cover and brown textured sheet for the back cover

For the insides of the cover, Black paper is the safest :) 

If you are feeling more creative, bring out all the paper cuttings / Photo colours / poster colours / anything!! to make a 'hatke' cover or even personalize the sheets inside.. :) 

 Decide the size of the book you wanna make..
I wanted half of A4 and thatsy had to cut the A4 sheets into half..
Align the paper and slightly centre fold the paper and keeping the steel scale as guide, cut the sheet ( I don't like folding the paper into half and sliding the blade through that.. it kinda gives a very unfinished look )
This will be your reference sheet.

 With the help of the reference sheet, cut rest of the sheets ( you can probably cut 6 or 7 sheets at a time.. depending on the thickness of your sheet )

 You can also choose different coloured sheets for the book.. I'm way to lazy these days to write a lot, so i decided to put in more sheets to stick pictures and caption them..
Make sure all the sheets are of the same size.

 Now, take one sheet out of the pile and mark 1.5 cm from the edge ( again.. Decide whether you want your book 'Landscape opening' or 'portrait opening' and depending on that, mark the line )

 Make markings of 1.5 cm or 2cm on the line... This is where the sheet is gonna be punched.. (if your are using a shape punch, depending on the shape, make the markings )

 If your sheet is thin/Flimsy, use a chart paper or an old magazine or an entire newspaper for punching the reference sheet.. Otherwise you'll get creases (see at the punch 1 )...

Now that your reference punch sheet is ready, pile up 7-8 sheets below the reference sheet and make sure all the edges are accurate and paper clamp them ( the paper clams will hold the sheets from shifting while you are punching them )

 Punch all the sheets and pile them up to check if they all are in order..

 Now, take the mill board and take a reference sheet and cut the mill board to the size of the sheet ( you could also make the mill board a li'l bigger than the sheet size , say about 0.3cm  longer on all sides than the sheet )

 You'll need 2 mill board pieces (one for the back and one for the front )

 Using the reference punched sheet, punch the mill boards

 Punch mill board

 I used brown textured sheet for the back, the printed paper as the opening page and white grass paper for the front cover.

 Cut the back cover page to the size of the mill board coming at the back.

 Glue the back cover page to the mill board ( on one side first )

 Punch holes onto the back cover page with the reference of the mill board.
Do the same thing for the other side of SAME mill board.

Instead of using black for the inside of the back cover, i used brown textured sheet for both side.
Let the back cover dry.

 Now, for the front side, cut the front cover sheet to the size of the mill board.
On the mill board, mark 2 cm from the edge where you have punched and draw another line from this 2 cm ka line at a distance of 0.2 cm.

 Punch the cover sheet with the mill board as reference. (use the paper clamps to hold the paper in place )

 Keep the cover page aside.

 Cut the 0.2 cm part of the mill board now.

 Take the cover page and pour glue onto it and stick both pieces of the mill board onto the sheet.
One from the punched edge and the other from the other corner of the cover page.
There should be a gap between both pieces of the mill board.

For the inside, i have used a dark red chart paper.
Stick it onto the mill board.

 With the help of a pencil (the unsharpened end ), run it firmly in the gap between the mill boards.
Do it both on the outside and inside.
This is done for easy opening and closing of book.

 Now, Punch the inside of the front cover.

 Now that, the back cover, sheets and front cover are ready, Decide what you wanna use to bind the book.
I like the rustic and earthy feel of the jute thread.

 If you're using a jute thread, pour a lil fevicol to the tip of the jute thread and make sure you get a stiff tip. (its easier to thread into the needle)

There are different ways to bind a book.. You can find various kinds of thread bindings on 'Goggle-ji' ( there again the punches vary according to the kind of stitch ) ..

 I like the Chine bookbinding technique as its very simple to do :).
You can try various kinds of double punch designs and experiment with the binding itself if you are making a simple cover page.

Your book is ready! :)
For simple binding, you can do various kinds of designs with paints on the cover page or you can even stick different textured sheets on the cover page.
I'm a hugggeee fan of bamboo designs and hence the bamboo painting for the orange book. :)

Have fun writing, sticking a million pictures, pinning movie tickets /memories/ leaves anything! :) :)
I would love to see what you guys came up with :D .. do lemme know! :D