Squash Book Tutorial

I thought I'd add the instructions for making a "Squash Book" on here.  This is a book I made a couple of years ago as a class for a cyber crop

Ingredients for the basic album

3 sheets of card, Bazzill is good

thicker card for the covers

Ribbon

Selection of toning patterned and plain papers

Tools etc

Good quality glue

Double sided sticky tape

Bone folder

Use a bone folder to get good creases on all the folds

1. Cut 3 perfect squares of card.  I made mine 8.5inches (21cms) square.  It’s important to make the squares accurately so that the book folds properly.

2. Make just one diagonal fold on each piece of card

   3. Open up and fold edge to edge (like folding a card) but do this both ways.  When you’ve made all three folds each piece should look like that in the second photo

 4. Lay the three pieces of card as shown in the photo below with the diagonal folds going vertically and the middle card overlapping one corner-square of each of the other two.

 5 Apply glue to the whole of each of the two corner-squares where the sheets of card overlap. Stick down carefully so that the squares match.  Take care here or the book won’t fold properly.                          

6. Squeeze in the corners of the outer pieces of card as shown.

Just push the top and bottom corners along the diagonal fold lines and press down firmly

  

7. Keeping the folds tucked in, turn the whole thing over and now squeeze in on the remaining diagonal lines.

Press down on the whole lot and you should have a square book – put something on top of it to stop it all springing out again!

 Next make the covers.

 I used mountboard, but you could use something thinner – or maybe stick two pieces of card together to get a more sturdy cover

1. Cut two pieces of thicker card that are a bit bigger that the book you’ve already made – I made mine just under 0.5cms bigger on each edge.  If when you’ve cut the squares they seem a bit too big, you can shave off some more.

 2. Cut 2 squares of whatever paper you want to use for your book which are about 2cms bigger all round than the covers, stick one of the squares in the middle of each paper square.

 3. Pre-fold all the edges and make the mitred corners – it’s easier to form the shapes before you apply the glue.

 4. Stick down all the corners and edges as shown

 5. Cut a long piece of ribbon.  There needs to be enough to around the whole book and have enough to tie a bow, so be generous, you can discard the extra later.

Decide which is to be the back cover and make a line just under halfway down where the ribbon will go.  Use double sided tape (DST) to fix the ribbon in place.

6. Put DST just inside all the edges of the back cover – remember the actual book pages are slightly smaller than the covers.  Add a bit more DST over the ribbon just to make sure.

Carefully line up the cover and the back of your book and stick down firmly.

7. Repeat the sticking process with the front cover – this time you don’t need any ribbon as the piece you’ve already added goes right around the book and holds everything in place.

Remember that if you are using a paper with a “one-way” design you’ll need to match up the patterns nicely on the 2 covers.

8. Bring the ribbons round to the front and tie a bow to close the book, cut off any excess ribbon.

Now it’s ready to decorate and fill.

 

Here's what my completed book looked like with photos added

 Here's another example of the Squash book. This was made as a gift with spaces for the recipient to add their own photos and journalling:

I hope you like this book idea and will want to have a go at making one for yourself, they are fun to make and fun to share.

I'd love to hear what you think so please leave a message - and if you make one of these books do come and let me know where I can see it!

Thanks for visiting