Books, Books and More Books!

Yesterday at Wednesday Witches I sat and made books. Then I made more books. Then I made more books. I already had some made but I still need more.

This morning I started collecting all of the things that I am going to need inside the book and tea shop.

As usual when I get serious about a project I dig through all of my finished items and grab all of the stuff that I think that I'll need.

Here's my box so far. I have a goodly amount of books, but not nearly enough for two stories + attic.

I am thinking that the books for sale will be a little "different" as you go higher in the store. The main floor will be for regular customers. The attic will be by invitation only, Special Collections so to speak. Only customers that can levitate will have access to the third floor attic area.

Here are some examples of the different kinds of books that the shop will carry.

The "sets" are from Jim Collin's website of printies. http://www.printmini.com/printables/ They are simply printed out and folded into boxes. They are pretty good for filling space.

The ones between the sets on the bottom shelf are leather bound with gold gel pen writing on the spines. I made a bunch of these when I was thinking of making a magic shop like the one on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I may still do that at some point, but for now this will be a good place to put all of those books.

The ones on the top shelf are books with colored card stock jackets. They are all individually made. If I were going to make them to open and not just sit on shelves, I would make them from real paper glued together on one edge or grab a few cheap notepads that have the rubberized edges on them and cut them up for the pages. Since these will never be opened I took the easy way out. And believe me this is even easier than cardboard filler!

The white "insides" that you see at the center top are kids' fun foam. I get it at Wal Mart. You can also buy it at craft stores by the sheet. It is very cheap and you can get many, many books out of just one sheet. The nice thing about it is it cuts easily with scissors and can be marked with a pencil.

To the right you see card stock that has been folded with a spine and roughly cut to fit around the filler pieces.

The other pieces that look like the spines of books are ads cut from advertisements in magazines for book clubs. Some are for popular books and once in a while you get lucky and find a "classic" book club with leather bindings.

They don't have to fit around the whole book. They only have to be a little wider than the spine so that they give the illusion of being a jacket or a whole leather cover. I have been known to buy a magazine simply because it has great ads for book clubs. I have been saving them for years. I also use a few that are just the front covers for books that I want laying around.

On this particular batch, I marked and cut the white fun foam 1/2" by 3/4". In other words the body of the book would be 6" by 9" in real life. I then cut a strip a couple of inches wide and the length of the paper. This is the assembly line method. I creased the card stock down the center in two places about 1/16" apart. You can also do it 1/8" apart if you want bigger books. Then all you do is just double up on the fun foam.

As you can see, I glued all of the pieces of foam to one side with a space between. I let that dry a bit and then cut them apart. The next step is to take a pair of small scissors and dry fold the cover and trim all around. Then you just stick the cover to the other side of the book. Check the trim and make adjustments if you need to. Last you either glue a fake spine down the back of the book or a cover to the front of the book if you want to lay it on a table or chair somewhere.

Now go look at all of your magazines and find some ads. Have fun making books for every room of the house.

Tomorrow is another day, whatever that means......See you then.