WOYWW 351 – lots of stuff

Hello WOYWWers! I very nearly didn’t even try to take part this week, cause I am struggling with time, but I figure I have to just try to make time for the things I love.  So here’s me, tryin’…

I have a few things on my desk, and my desktop.

I was making a template for a cut&fold book, cause I am still just a huge fangirl of TWD.  Yes, even at my age…  There is also the cut&fold I did yesterday, adding to my Me as a stencil and Me as a stamp collection.  A closer look:

Of more interest, probably, are the flowers.  It seems to be a thing to decorate folded books with the kusudama flowers.  I’ve made the standard version but they take AGES, lots of folding, etc.  I have an easy version bookmarked, that creates a quicker, but still effective flower.

They end up looking like this

But I went on and experimented further with making the flowers using a number of different Nestie shapes, as well as the 4-petal version:

There are a few tricks to the scallop and spikey circle versions, which I will share probably tomorrow. But for today, I will just say Happy WOYWW and hope to get round for a few visits at lunch! I wonder what I will see?  Oh the antici……………….pation!

Folded ME!

LOL!  Long time readers might recall when I made my passport photo into a stencil

and then when I carved the image and made me a stamp instead

So it will come as no surprise that I folded me as a cut&fold book LOL!

This image was not one I could fill with lines (or at least not as easily as I normally would do for a template) so I used the trick of printing the image over my sheet of lines to create the template

Kinda makes me laugh as the book is entitled Good Wives (sequel to Little Women actually, another reason to laugh, if you know me) and yes, the project is a little useless, but it was an experiment.  I had the idea that it might be fun to do the kids but I need a couple of good photos for that and they have gone all camera-shy on me.  I had already converted my photo to the right sort of B&W, blocks of colour image and the book was the exact right size (literally 2 pages left either side) so I just did it.

I also did my trick of folding the usual alternating edges deeper, the folding the edges of the page to be cut to just overlap those and I think it makes a nice, substantial, cut&fold book

I have also been playing with flowers some more, for book folding decorations.  I’ll have to share them on another day….

Flowers, for a change

I have been so lax in my blogging, sorry about that.  Life has been busy.

I had a discussion with some book fold-ers who like adorning their book fold projects with kusudama flowers  – the ones like THIS:

and shared an easier version that still looks quite nice.  It has only four petals, usually and looks like this:

 

The steps are so simple, much easier than the standard version.

Fold a square on the diagonal, then bring the lower corners up to meet the point.

Open up the folds and fold the sides in to meet the crease

Flip it over and fold down the points, then unfold them

Stick the unit together where the arrows point to, like this:

I like to use Fabri-tac glue – hot glue or some other strong, quick-set glue works best, rather than a tape runner or double-sided tape.  Stick the units together into a flower shape

As shown, you can do four or five units as you prefer.  You can leave the little points as they are or fold them over flat or open them out to make the “rabbit ear” inner petals.

and you can even fold five units and join them for one that looks like THIS:

Long time reader know me – I am all about the easy LOL!  I had a look and there is a video that might help:

You might be able to use the same principle to make a flower ball, using the simple version, but I can’t say that I’ve done it myself.  YMMV.

Multi-line folding!

I made a multi-line folding alphabet, using the most popular font (and am working on a more plain version) but am nor quite to the final sharing point.  I have been super busy, and it is half-term week for DD this week, so it is all taking longer than I hoped.  MAKING it was a piece of cake, but composing a blog post to explain it all is a different matter. And I pre-stretched the letters so you can see the fold in proportion, just using the black lines.

Here are a couple of (flawed) samples.  Long time readers know my private subtitle for this blog is I make the mistakes so you don’t have to! and these show that pretty well.

First, I unfolded an old sample (a paperback) to test out a pattern:

Pretty good, but I mis-calculated the start page.  and I kept trying different things for the extra side pages where the words were shorter.  Still, not a bad first effort.

Then I worked out the right start pages and a side-fold for the extra bits that I liked well enough, but for the cutting into sections, I TOTALLY ballsed that up.  I know what I did – I didn’t mark the CUT LINE from the PATTERN, I marked the cutting line from the previous cut.  Than mean that if I didn’t have the previous page well place, every new mark was just that little bit off.  It went up and down like a mountain range!

I tried to sort it by cutting away a bigger gap but it still wasn’t right. The second cutting line was better, nearly perfectly straight, even if it seems less s in the photo.

And overall?

I am certain I can mask the wonky first cut with some ribbon across the divide, and I wish I had carried on with the original plan of making Lots with a capital L, making the first and last line virtually the same length, so the side folds were only in the middle section. But as a test to see how it works, I learned a lot.

So, once I can take the time to explain how to use it, this is what the PDF looks like. Sorry, still not willing to do the counting, but I can better explain why! You can see the s, for example.  If your book was right on the edge of having enough pages, can you see how it would be very easy to omit the 10 folds at the end and make it 47 folds, rather than 57?

You can make note of that on the count page for future reference.  And maybe you can also see where some breaks are SO CLOSE together, they COUD be counted as a single fold instead of two?  the end of the s and its tail in the above sample? That sort of thing is personal preference and specific to the folder and the book she uses.

Your count sheet will be specific to you.  Plus I still don’t want to give a wrong count and ruin someone’s work {wink}

This is what the PDF will look like

 

I added numbers and some special symbols as well.  Watch for it in the next day or so – I just need to carve out a little bit more time to finish up!

Sharing request results

I have sent out so many templates.  Some people have been back again and again to ask for new names, words, symbols, etc.  I ALWAYS ask them to share.  Sometimes they do!  I’m going to share a few today. Sorry if you shared via email and it didn’t appear here.  I am 100% sure I got at least one more but I cannot seem to find it in my inbox.

I did a template for Tanya that was the word ALWAYS and the symbol for The Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter fans will know!)

Turned out completely fabulous and her trick for sewing thru the pages to hold the book stable was a great idea:

 

Using the same Harry Potter font, Luann did a folded Abbey as a gift

Next is one I just got from Naomi.  Clever girl!  She took the lines sheet I added, so people could print their own templates, and created a bat symbol!

She did the cut&fold technique and it turned out perfectly.

The info on using the lined sheet can be found here.  And because longer words need room to stretch (which increases the number of black lines per letter, and means there is no need to fold the white lines as well) I am adding a US Legal size version.  US legal is 8.5 x 14 inches and should be an option in your printer menu.  DO NOT use the .jpg image below – that is just to show you what it looks like!

Don’t have US legal paper?  No worries.  It is simple enough to cut a bit off a second sheet of US letter or A4 paper and stick it to the first to make a 14 inch long sheet and print on that!

I also did make a three-line folded book, using info from the video I last added, but it is still a bit dark here and I have been too busy to take a photo of it.  And the excess pages left at the sides look a bit crap cause I was experimenting with different ideas for folding  spacers.  I will share it, but not today.

Thank you SO much to those who did share their work.

 

Book folding – multi-line patterns!

SO excited to find this.

I replied to someone wanting a multi-line template saying that the only way I could think to do it was to cut the book into sections and this is just how she does it.  I like how the templates are laid out, in three lines, one letter per page (upper and lower case) and might consider doing that myself if I were to add more full alphabets.  She also adds the count of each letter but unless I were charging for templates I can’t see me doing THAT {wink}

I have sent DS off to the local charity shops and said Buy me the fattest hardback books you can find, don’t care what the titles are! so I can test this out! And I also found an alternative way to do the cut&fold that is a bit like the one in the previous post, although the way the cut section gets folded back is a little different.  If book folding interests you I would def. search for it on YouTube.  I found a lot of new things (well, new to ME, not newly added) when I searched that on a whim, having exhausted yarn dyeing with cake colours videos while doing my morning treadmill walking LOL!

Cut and Fold, my way

I wanted to try making the cut&fold versions a little nicer, because the edges of the pages could get a bit ragged over time, I think.  It occurred to me that folding the folded-edge pages deeper, then folding the pages to be cut just a bit, would possibly work to make it all a bit more substantial.  Also, the extra thickness would make even a few lines look fat:

I think it DOES work.  I folded the alternating folded edge pages to about 1 1/2 inches, then folded the pages to be cut to just overlap the edge. The design was my daughter’s name (at her request!) and it used about 110 lines,

You can see the cut edges look more solid.

And look how distinct the flourish is!  I’m adding that template as well, download it here.  I thought about doing the same flourish at the bottom, flipped vertically, but decided to go another way!

Wish I had taken a photo of the process, but basically I took a strip as long as it needed to be, and scored and folded an inch either side.  I stuck the photos to it with very thick pop-dots so the really stood out.  Slipping the scored and folded tabs in between the pages, I stuck them to the pages.  That makes it all stand out from the surface quite nicely.  These are photos of DD with her helper at her disability skating group Spice (Special People on Ice) – Spice is one of the things she loves best in life.

I did use another Basic Grey line, (Dawson, I think) but one that is the boyish companion to the girly version (Sophie?) but the colours worked perfectly with the outfits.

Another project that manages to mix scrapbooking with book folding!  I like it.  The cut&fold method seems to lend itself to adding photos to the face of the book, unlike the proper folded versions.

I may have to figure out one to make for DS, so I can properly photograph it and do a tutorial.  I am well out of practice LOL! Will be on the lookout for used book shops this weekend…

Book folding, Basic Grey and a fun project

I mentioned before that I thought the cut&fold heart could for the basis for a fun scrapbooking project.  And so it did.

I did the cut&fold, then removed the pages from the spine.  I covered the spine and the covers

then re-stuck the pages to the inside.

and I punched holes at the top and at the bottom of the covers to run a chain, before sticking the final bit

Now, I wanted the heart to be wider, and the book more open.  It took me a while to sort out how best to do that – turned out it was easy.  I cut a handful (ok so maybe 2 or 3 handfuls!) of strips of black cardstock, and slipped them in between the pages (at every edge-folded page, not EVERY page) and that opened up the heart and kept the book fat and open enough that the chain stayed in place and didn’t slip down because the book COULDN’T close, even a smidge. I printed a photo and stuck that inside the inverted heart fold.

This is not a great picture but it is a more accurate depiction of the placement than the later one.

In the end, it looks like this – can you recognize Basic Grey Obscure? And can you see how skewed it looks cause of the angle of the photo?

I am so sad to see BG is over.  I so love it.  I have a box that has scraps of loads of early collections, hoarded. I thought I would add a couple of projects – still one of my favourite mini-books, also of my son and daughter:

That is a board book.  From the front you read in to the middle, then flip it over and read to the middle out.  How they’ve changed!

And one of my fave minis:

Also Obscure.

I would love a quilt made from this collection.  Maybe they will convert to a fabric company instead…..