Like with Paper Bag Books, I am intriguied by word books. I love most of the ones I’ve seen but they never really seem to be of the words I want. Beach, Home, Family, all good, and some stunning examples, but I wanted to make custom ones for my kids and there is no one selling chipboard versions of individual names that I have seen. I also wanted to push the boundaries a bit, so I came up with this dual sided word book for DD. Her name works because of the letters of it. Having the double Ds in the middle worked really well, but I think it’s possible other letters would work. I like being able to use the ribbon looped around the first and last letters to tie it closed as well.
The process is pretty easy.
1. cut 8 x 12 strips of fairly heavyweight cardstock then score and fold, creasing well, so each one is now 4 x 12. Stick them together well, not just on the edges)
2. pick your font and play with it in WordArt or whatever you use till you get it to be just about 4 inches tall. A really really FAT font works for short word books only, but a tall thin font (like Euphorigenic, here) lets you use quite a long word. Cut out the letters (you can easily do this on a Cricut or Craft Robo or whatever cutting machine you use, as well as doing it by hand)
3. Now the sort of tricky part – you need to lay the cut letters on the 4 x 12 cardstock pieces (put the folded edge at the top!) The first letter needs to be far enough from the left edge that you can fit whatever binding holes you want (BIA, Cropadile, whatever) so leave a good 3 inches from the left edge and where the letter is. Stick it with repositionable adhesive.
4.Trace around the letter and cut it out, but only on the right hand edge of the letter – leave a bit of the left edge as part of the page. This is assuming you are working on a standard left bound word book or a left side page of a dual one like this.
5. What I do is leave the completed page on my desk, and for the next page, work under that one (in a 2d way, not literally UNDER it!)so I can see what sort of overlap I will want. I repeat the process for each page.
6. Once all the page are done, use a couple of binder clips to clamp all the pages in a stack with the letters arranged as you want them to be. Turn over and trim the excess flush with the length of the last page. You may need to adjust a bit to make sure you don’t get a first page that is all letter and no substance – unless you like that.
I do realize as I write this that it’s perhaps not clear for real visual learners. I had intended to photo the last one I made but then…didn’t. I will do, if I get a chance, but I’m teaching at Scrapfever this weekend and sorting out a few last minute details so I may not get to it till next week. But I will add them either in a blog post or as a PDF.
In the meantime, there is a very good video by desdichaedo for making a chipboard book. It is in 5 (yes 5!) parts, so very detailed in the decorating – the first in the series addresses the construction of the book. It’s not really the same as my cardstock one, but the principles of laying out the pages are more of less the same.