Book Tree Tutorial

I hit the books this week - making a few projects that have been on my "to do" list, made out of books!

The first project was a book tree. I was a little discouraged to start this project as I knew it involved paper folding. I have not been able to paper fold much of anything successfully. Paper airplanes - no success with that one yet;  Origami - I need a lot of assistance; Tea folding - ha, ha, ha, I won't comment on that one. Yeah...paper folding is not my forte, so I wasn't sure how this "try"al was going to go - but it turned out to be easy and fun. Let me show you how I did it.

First of all, I read a tutorial on how to make a book tree. I found it on Kayla Amiee's blog - CLICK HERE to see her tutorial.  I will let you go see her tutorial on how to take the book apart and get an idea on how she made her book trees. I wasn't sure how big a paper back I should use. The book I used had 230 pages. It takes 60 pages to make a full tree. With one book I was able to make three trees, and I had some book pages left over to do some other crafts. After taking the book apart and cutting off a section of thirty pages, start folding the pages.

1. I am showing you how to fold the book pages using a newspaper. Go ahead and practice on one to get the feel of it.

2. Fold the right hand corner down to the center. Your book page is more rectangular - so the right hand corner will not reach the bottom of the book like pictured here with the newspaper.  Once you have done the first fold, take the bottom right hand corner and fold the page over to the middle.

3. The page will extend beyond the book.

4. The folded page needs to be flush with the unfolded book bottoms. You can cut the excess folded book page off or fold the excess upward.

5. Continue on with the rest of the book.

Once you have finished the thirty pages - you have one tree half. Make the other half. Run a strip of hot glue down the spine of the tree and adhere both halves together.
*FYI* - I trimmed two of my trees at the bottom so that they are all different heights. I trimmed 3/4 of an inch off one, and 1 1/2 inches off the other. I trimmed them while they were in the "half" stage.

I have pinned a book tree that was displayed on pretty candle holders. It was very pretty so I did the same thing - only I used smaller candle holders. I made my stars out of cardboard, inked them and hot glued them to the tops. 

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