Cathy Lecleire tutorial on how to make an accordion book

hi my name is Kathy LeClair and I teach Book Arts at Montclair State in a variety of other places today what I wanted to show you is how you can make simple books that actually are wonderful for the classroom I do want to first go over materials and supplies because there are a few things that that you need but you can always use some kind of alternative as well the first one is a bone folder that's made out of a variety of materials this bone folder is made out of plastic this one's made out of Teflon this one is actually made out of bone and this one's made out of raw walrus bone they are readily available at art stores or you could even use a tongue depressor which is a thicker piece of wood in that same shape you can use any kind of alternative tools that that can mimic what a bone folder can do a pencil is always important obviously this is a 4h pencil which will give you a very fine line and all is also an important - you can easily get this at a hardware store I usually have an eraser to protect it so I don't cut myself I use single edge razor blades for cutting but you may want to choose any other cutting tool this one right here is a retractable blade for smaller work this one is great for cutting bigger work and boards especially the other thing that's very important is a good pair of scissors so you can see that these are a very nice pair of scissors you need a paintbrush for glue these are called Heikki brushes and these are great because they will allow you to put a lot of glue on very very evenly along with the brushes there are a variety of glues that are out there on the market they are all what we call PVA glue they're polyvinyl adhesives librarians and conservationists use it there's little brands that I have but I usually take my PVA glue like this and I pour it in the container and I actually added a little bit of water to make it more fluid to work with we'll be using that a little bit later it's always good to have some wax paper available and paper towels for cleanup and for your brushes a container for water you will see that the glue dries really very very quickly so if it's drying quickly on your book it's drying quickly on your brush so remember to try and put your brush in the water in between gluing also don't put a wet brush back into your glue what you want to do is get all the moisture out of your brush before you return it into the container of glue so how about if we get started oh I also want you to have good measuring tools I have a small carpenter square right here which gives us a perfect right angle some book artists like to use a triangle I don't always use the triangle but the nice thing about this one is that it does have very close increments and then for larger work I have the big carpenter square as well these I got at a hardware store in the art stores are usually made out of aluminum and your blade will cut aluminum so definitely purchase these at the hardware store and they'll be much cheaper as well today what we're going to do is a simple accordion binding and it's going to look something like this so this is a great book for a continuous imagery and as you can see this is one that I did right here which are chairs so you can see how how the accordion works it is a great binding to use and it's very very versatile the important thing to know is that when you get a piece of paper a piece of paper has what's called a grain to it so all the fibers want to line up and then mixing it easier to fold if I take this piece of paper and I fold it this way it wants to fold this way if I try to fold it this way see how much resistance I get that's because the fibers like this are all lined up it's very ha it's very easy to fold with the fibers it's very hard to fold against the fibers so we call that the grain of the paper in this case this paper runs grain short other times you'll get papers and they run grain long like that so you need to fill your paper each time to see which way it folds better that way I have too much resistance this way so that means that the fibers are lining up this way I've actually taken this paper and I've cut it into shorter pieces like this we're going to take one of these and I'm going to show you how easy it is to make it accordion the first thing you want to do is you want to fold it in half and just by folding it in half like this you can then take your bone folder and see how that bone folder will make a perfect fold for you now I'm going to fold one flap over like this then I'm going to turn it on the other side and I'm going to fold the other side each time I'm meeting back to my center fold and I'll take it again and I'm going to fold this side I'll turn it over and fold this side and for my last and final fold I will actually take that center piece and put it and fold it right into what we called the gully right there to do my last fold the bone folder will do all the work for you now when I take this out I will have to refold this so it is it is an accordion or like the way we used to make fans going back and forth and because you already have your folds your paper will want to go once I finish this I actually have another accordion just like this and what I'd like to show you now is how to hinge an accordion I am going to line up my accordion alone along the lines of my the lines of the grid on my self-healing board right here and if I place my two sheets right next to each other I also have a little lead weight right there that I'll use to keep it right in place then I don't have to worry my hands are actually free now there are a lot of tapes out there that you can use to hinge this is actually an archival tape but in some cases you may just have to use scotch tape or masking tape that's what is readily available but I'm going to use a tape right here that is a tape that is archival so it will not put any acid in your work acid or do any damage to your work so if I just place the tape right along here in that center area right here just like that all I have to do now is with my razor blade or with my retractable berlet blade I'm just going to cut the tape right along the edge here and right along the edge here you could also use the scissors whatever you're comfortable with especially with younger kids they certainly should not be using blades now what I can do is I can fold my accordion right like this and I have a much longer piece like this what I'd like to show you now is I want to make boards on the outside and put decorative paper so that now we'll be able to have a complete accordion I are precooked boards right here these boards are actually what we call 2 X meaning that they are 2 boards that are literally glued together when you get your boards they come 1 X 2 X 3 X and you can even look on the side and see the it looks like two boards that are actually glued together these boards right here the same as the accordion also have a grain to it so you can see that they want to bend more easily this way than they want to bend this way so keep that in mind when you're going to glue these now it is sometimes hard to find decorative papers but many times in the stores they can sell pads that are fairly cheap like this that are decorative papers I have two sheets right here that I've cut and what I'm going to do is I'm going to place it 1/2 an inch all the way around so it basically floats around the outside what I'll do with my pencil is I will line this up so that everything is straight I'll do one and I'll do the same with the other right like this and now I'm ready to glue I'll place my two boards right here along with my pencil and I'm going to grab my glue right here and since this is a smaller board I'll probably use my smaller brush when things are bigger then you can move into your bigger brushes and they come in all different different sizes the important thing is that when you put glue on your boards you want to put them on very very evenly you don't want to have heavy areas of glue just spread that so that the glue is nice and even now it will take a couple seconds for the glue to sit up and get tacky but once you're putting the glue on you will feel a little bit of resistance and you'll be able to tell that the glue is now getting ready it's ready to be placed on the paper so I'm centering that right here what I'm going to do is I'm going to do this so that it is actually we're gonna do it two at a time so I will take my second board right here and I'll put glue on it as well the reason that I like to do this this way is that so there is always glue on my brush and always working so I don't have to put my my brush back in the water in between I'd like to be able to do this so that when I finish I can put my brush in the water after everything is complete so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a dot of glue in each of these four corners these aren't the greatest corners but they are the easiest corners to make and when you put a dot of glue in these corners what it does is it softens the paper so once I put the dots of glue right like that I'm able to push with my thumb into the corner right here and I'm going to be able I'm going to do that on all four sides now it's important to remember when you make this corner that you make it so that it's a little square right there don't push in this direction don't push in that direction really from your thumb push right into the corner right like that and do that on all four sides I'll do that too this one right here you can see I'm just putting the little bits of glue in that corner and while each corner is a little damp its softening the paper so that it will fold over very easily just like that now I'm going to show you a fun little trick as to how you can get these corners turned over this is one of the first things I learned when I took book arts and if you go like this I call this a little jog right here I'll bring that down like that sometimes just check and see sometimes you get little air bubbles on your paper so just with your bone folder you can rub those out and I can also score my paper along here too so you get my fold started so see how by doing that little jog you got the paper to turn over on the side very easily just like that and now I'll just press that down you need to watch out that sometimes you may if you look at that right there you may get a little glue that seeps out whenever a little bit of glue does seep out from the back of your book be ready with a paper towel to wipe that glue off if not what's going to happen is you will get glue on your book so always make sure that your surface is clean what I love about book arts is that it is a very clean medium so you can wear nice clothing and not have to worry but having a neat clean working surface is what's really really important that's why I really like these self killing boards they keep everything nice and neat see there's a little spot of glue right there so you want to get that off I'll bring that over just like that and again now I cut my boards to the exact same size as my accordion and the reason why you want that you want it to be the same size is if it is too big your accordion is going to flop down so you need them to be the exact same same size what I'm going to do now is I am going to glue the back piece right here to the accordion so run glue along the back of your boards just like this and run that right up to the edge okay when you run when you put the glue right up to the edge that will ensure that the paper that the entire paper gets caught nice and even just like that and then bring your back page just like this it sits on the back of the book and then you're going to do the same to the front again nice even coating of glue just like that and make sure that the glue is really smooth and I'll take the other side right here and I will glue that on just like that right to size now the important thing to remember is even though you think you're finished you are not completely finished the reason is that there is a lot of moisture from the glue in your book you need to protect your book from the rest from the ends because the moisture will actually seep through and warp your books so with a bit of wax paper what you want to do you want to place this in between the the folds of the first and the last page so just like this place the wax paper in and that wax paper should sit in there for a couple hours just until the book is dry now what was very important was I need to put my brush back in the water right here and now I'll be able to take it out in a little while and I'll be able to use it for my next book I have used this many times in the classroom with storytelling with comics with different kinds of materials it is a great solution for the classroom and a very quick project that the students can do in all age groups so as you can see there are endless possibilities of what you can do with an accordion book and this is just not for an art class this is great for a science class for a history class for English for math and incorporating all kinds of techniques with implementing book arts into the classroom I hope you enjoy the accordion demonstration today and hope to see you again soon

Channel: ArtsHorizons

Views: 34,890

Keywords: ati, artshorizons, book arts, art

Id: skfSIUG-8H8

Length: 18min 18sec (1098 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 09 2015