Hi There!
Have you been thinking about the idea of making your own art journal – from scratch? Well, you can! It’s really not as scary or hard as it sounds. The secret is in folding paper – just like those paper snowflake or angel garlands you made in grade school.
The method I’m describing here is a summary of how I make folded books. If you’d like a more in-depth class, this one is very helpful.
Make It!
One of the easiest types of journals to make is an accordian fold book. It’s also called concertina folding, which sounds fancier but is the same simple back and forth pleating technique.
Cut – or go wild and tear! – a piece of paper into a long skinny rectangle of whatever length you’d like. Start folding at one end (remember those snowflakes) in a back and forth manner until you use up all the paper. If it doesn’t come out just so at the end – so what? Either cut it off or leave it and call it a design choice!
Now, what do you have? A square-ish packet of folded paper – or, as I like to call it – your very own art journal! Of course it’s blank right now, but you can fix that – collage onto the panels, paint, sticker, glitter, or whatever you’d like.
When you’re done with your little book, tie a ribbon or string around it, or clip it closed with a metal clip, or some other ingenious closure you’ll come up with.
One of the features of a concertina fold book is that the panels on each side can be arranged in a particular order to tell a story and each side could be completely different. What fun!
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