Guest tutorial by e. bond of roughdraftbooks

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We are thrilled today to bring you a cool star book bookbinding tutorial by roughdrAftbooks.  roughdrAftbooks is a sweet little one woman book studio in the heart of philadelphia specializing in hand-made book forms that turn into journals, notepads and one-of-a-kind wonders perfect for documenting your life.  Check her out online at Poppytalk Handmade HERE or on Etsy HERE. roughdrAftbooks will be holding a live bookmaking workshop at Anthropologie in Philadelphia (part of a city-wide event called Design Philadelphia. See info and site here).  Here's the tutorial! (Thanks e.)!


This star book form is a great structure to use in many ways. I have used this form as a holiday ornament, sun catchers, gift tags for presents and even wedding favors. You can use all kinds of great materials to make your form special.

Materials Needed:
5 pieces of paper, any size as long as it is perfectly square
2 pieces of decorated paper 1.5 inches larger than the size of your boards (to cover your boards)
2 boards (mat board thickness) cut exactly half the size of the paper you are using + ¼ inch
For instance if your paper is a 6 x 6 inch square, then you should cut 2 boards that are 3 ¼ inch.
glue stick, bone folder, scissors, cutting board and a piece of ribbon or something to use to keep book closed or to hang it from




1. Cut 2 boards and cover them.

2. Cover your boards by first putting glue stick on one side of the board and adhere the board to the center of the back of your decorated paper. Then using your scissors clip corners leaving 1/8” of paper between the board tip and your cut edge (see image 02)

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3. Put glue on tab on one side and using bone folder underneath the tab, fold edge over and burnish down. Do the opposite tab next. (image 03) Then, using your fingernail, or bone folder, pinch corners in before folding tabs down with bone folder. Next, glue and burnish to the remaining 2 sides. Use these steps to cover both cover boards.

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4. Next each of the five sheets that will make up your book block using the following steps:
Make sure your creases are done very crisply with a bone folder. (images 04+05)

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a. Fold paper in half, and then in half again the opposite way.
b. Turn paper over and fold diagonally from point to point. (see image 06)

c. After diagonal folds, fold star up and in on itself. (see image07)

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5. Put scrap paper in between folded star section and glue to next star sheet using glue stick. (see diagram 09). You are to keep stacking and gluing all your 5 folded pieces of paper together one at a time to make a book block. Glue up one side of the folded star, taking care to align the pages as you glue so you don’t have a crooked book block. It is important that when you glue the 5 folded pages together all the closed corner ends are glued together facing the same way so all the open ends of the book can open and fan apart like in (diagram 15).

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6. Now take covered boards and place them corner to corner (shown in image 11)
making sure there is about 1/4” space in between boards. Using glue stick, make a glue line diagonally across both boards and place a ribbon across the back side of boards as shown. Make sure to leave enough on each side to tie book closed. (see image 12)

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7. Put scrap paper in one end of star book block block and add glue to that side. Now place it on top of one board with folded or closed part of the book block toward the edge of the board that is closed with the ribbon. Make sure this edge is flush with the edge of the boards, not centered.

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8. Now glue other end using scrap paper and place the board on the top of glued area. Make sure to line up so book is straight. When you have burnished down the last edge, open the book up to make sure pages are not sticking together, (images 14+15)

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roughdrAftbooks

roughdrAftbooks is a sweet little one woman book studio in the heart of philadelphia specializing in hand-made book forms that turn into journals, notepads and one-of-a-kind wonders perfect for documenting your life.  Check her out online at Poppytalk Handmade HERE or below: