DIY Origami Paper Bound Book

The first time in Japan, I was delighted, but woefully unprepared for all the different commemorative stamp opportunities.  Every castle, park and museum seemed to have one (or more), so we just stamped on our pamphlets and such.

But as you can see, many of them got crumpled or smeared in the process :(

This time, I will have a proper stamp book!

Cute, neh? Here's how it's made.

Supplies:
- Stack of 6" x 6" white cardstock (I used 12 "art tiles", little squares of thick paper I found at Michael's)
- Assorted 6" x 6" origami paper (I used an old origami-a-day calendar)
- Paper glue (I used zip dry)
- ruler
- knife or scissors
- thin cardboard (for the cover)

First I cut some of the origami paper into 1.5" strips. Colorful!

Fold them in half, with the design facing inward.

Glue one side of the origami paper to a sheet of white paper.

And then do the same on the other side.  Make sure the papers can lay flat when you open them.

Continue gluing strips to the sides of the white paper until you reach your desired thickness.  For me, it was 12 sheets, for a total of 24 stampable pages.

Next, cut out two 6" x 6" squares of paper board for the cover.  Cut one sheet of origami paper in half (two 3" strips).

  And glue the covers on the same way the pages were glued together, by folding in half and gluing to each side.  Make sure to leave a little bit of overhang on the paper fold so that the cover has room to open completely flat.

See the slight overhang on the origami paper fold under the cover?

For the spine, cut out a small strip of card board to match the size of the book spine.  Mine was about 0.5" wide.  Glue the spine strip to the middle of a whole sheet of origami paper.

Glue one side down to the back cover of the book, and wrap it around the side to glue the front on.

All done!

It opens nicely too, completely flat.

With pretty colorful pages!

I added a little K-ON tea stamp to the cover.

And I cut out a few sheets of tracing paper to use as a blotting to protect the book pages from freshly stamped ink.

I'm really excited to fill it up with pretty stamps now!  Hopefully I constructed it well enough to withstand inner-purse travel :P