Folded Book Art

It's a very simple craft. It looks a lot more complicated than it is. You just need a book, a pencil and a pattern.

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Hi, I'm Joyce Petro and today we're going to talk about folded book art. All you really need are a book, a ruler with millimeter markings, a pencil and a pattern. That's all you need. So, it's really portable and very easy to do.

Joyce Petro: You take your total number of numbered pages, which in this book happens to be 325. Then, you'll notice that of course there are a few pages at the end of each book and the beginning of each book that are not numbered. So, you want to take those into account as well. So, your formula is to take your numbered pages, which in my case is 325, divide that by 2, which rounded goes to 163. I have 8 pages total between the front and the back and I add those two together, which gives me 171. And then the total number of pages needed for my pattern is 119. So, I've put that in there and I will subtract that giving me 52. And then that is divided by 2 to give you 26.

Joyce Petro: And the reason for that is because 325 pages, for instance, we are not counting by page number, because page numbers are front and back, we are counting by leaf. So, each page is called a leaf. So, we're going to need 119 leaves for our pattern.

Joyce Petro: So, I'm going to go ahead and count from the beginning to get to the 26 so that we start at the center. So, one, two, three four --

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Joyce Petro: So, we will start our pattern on 26 leaf and you will need a pattern. We're going to do a heart today. And this is what a pattern looks like. It's just columns showing you where you're going to make markings. So, there's three columns on this particular pattern and I will show you how that works as we get started.

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Joyce Petro: You take your book and put it flat in front of you like so and watch on your millimeters on your ruler because in my case my markings do not go all the way to the edge of my ruler and you want to make your markings as accurate as possible.

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Joyce Petro: My first page leaf, if you will, says make a marking at 7.2 like so. And the second marking, without moving the ruler, is 8.2. So, I just make markings on that page. And then that is how you continue page by page and it is time consuming but it is very easy to do.

Joyce Petro: After you get all of your pages marked, you will start folding. All you do is take the mark that you've made and fold the page on a right angle to that little mark that you made, your measured marks, the top and then the bottom as well. And try to be very exact. Hit your marks and make nice sharp creases as you go. This is really where the magic happens. As you're going, it doesn’t take long and you will begin to see the pattern take shape. Memory Bound, which is a scrapbooking store, card making store in Ankeny, offered a class and so I went to the class because I was always interested and kind of amazed by this, could not figure out how you would do it. So, I took the class and learned how to do it and then taught a few other people how to do it as well.

Joyce Petro: No, I have actually never gotten a paper cut.

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Joyce Petro: Isn't that just amazing that all you do is make some folds and you start to get a design?

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