Friday, April 21, 2017

snailmaillove.com

Here is another website with some freebies. I have made a ton of these little books and include the technique in pretty much every class I ever teach. She is calling it a mini-zine. Zine is the new word for little paper thing with some pages that needed a name.

For anyone who likes to letter, I recommend just doing your own headings on the pages.

I do have a really valuable tip for how to fold it and make it very precise - but I will have to make an appointment with my cinematographer to make a video....

http://www.snailmaillove.com/blog/2016/1/12/freebie-friday-a-day-in-the-life-minizine

I have also used this little format to make invitations and greeting cards.

The instructions for how to fold it are here:
how to fold mini-zine

3 comments:

  1. I have made these many times but would love to know the "secret". I always use my bone folder to mash the folds into place and they never completely match up. Thanks, Jean!

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    Replies
    1. I'll try to do this without video or even pictures. The thickness of the paper adds up so that when the book is completed, the front and back cover will not go all the way around the inside pages. My secret is to make the front cover line up and have the back cover be slightly too small, but the *shortness* is on the back, so it is less noticeable.
      To achieve this, I do the preliminary folds softly. There are bends in the paper, but none of them are CREASED firmly.

      Technically, the center fold that goes along the top edge can be creased, but, I don't crease it until the very end.

      So you have your little book folded softly and you put the front cover face down. Then you nudge the inner pages into place, stacking them squarely and making sure the corners line up.
      As you do this, you keep pressing a little harder on the folds - but do not make the final crease until the very end.

      When you get to the back cover - you smooth it around, and allow a new fold to emerge. You will see the the back page is a bit short - but it is symmetrical, so it looks fine and all the other pages are fine.

      It is almost like a bubble that you smooth from left to right, establishing the new fold. The original fold was soft - so you can burnish it and make it disappear.

      Only after you have a neat, tidy stack of pages do you CREASE the dickens out of it - using your bone folder.

      Obviously, the thicker the paper, the thicker the book. This results in more shortage on the back cover. But when everything lines up nicely, it is less noticeable.

      I hope that helps and one-of-these-days - I will try to shoot a video. I am sure there are other people who already have videos on how to do this out there - I just don't know how to find them. This fold has been around forever and there are a lot of different names - so no way to search it....

      Let me know if this helps.

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