Make a Hard Cover for Your Tiny Accordion Book

In this tutorial you'll learn a method for making a hard cover for an accordion style book without a spine. This type of cover gives the book some protection and structure, but also makes it possible to access both sides of the paper.

The cover I made doesn’t have a closure. I tried tying a ribbon around it, but because my book is so tiny, it didn’t really need it. You can use whatever kind of closure you want to, whether that’s ribbon, elastic or something else. There’s no real right or wrong when it comes to making books; there are a lot of different ways to approach things and sometimes it’s good just to try different things see what will happen.

Book block (instructions to make a tiny accordion book are in this video, which I've previously made as one of my instructables if you prefer written instructions)

Decorative paper or book cloth

Bone folder

Ruler

Cutting mat

Utility knife

PVA glue

Glue brush

Scrap paper

Waxed paper

Weight or book press

The first step is to carefully cut two pieces of your stiff cardboard down to size. I made my pieces the exact size of one of the paper pages, and I measured and marked my cutting points with the book itself rather than a ruler. When you cut your cardboard, try and keep your knife at a 90 degree angle to the cardboard and make sure to go slowly and cut with lots of light passes rather than trying to cut right through in one pass. This type of cardboard can be quite hard to cut, and you’ll be much less likely to slip and your edge will be much neater. I like to cut my second piece of cardboard against the first one to make sure both end up exactly the same size.

The next step is to cut two pieces decorative paper or book cloth to size to cover your boards. I used offcuts from an old screen print. I have a few videos on screenprinting on my Spines & Splines YouTube channel, so if that’s something you’re interested in learning about, be sure to have a look.

You’ll want to cut your paper or book cloth bigger than your cardboard pieces, leaving enough paper to glue around the edges of the board. My book is very small, so I just eyeballed an appropriate width. When I make larger books, I cut the overhang to the width of my ruler, which is about 3cm wide. Again, the easiest way to measure here is to use your pieces of cardboard as a guide.

When your paper is ready, it’s time to stick it to the cardboard. I accidentally glued up my paper in the example shown instead of the boards, but it’s actually easier to do it the other way around. Doing it this way wasn’t too much of an issue for me, as it turns out that my glue is getting on in years and isn’t super sticky anymore, but it’ll be easier if you glue the boards instead of the paper. Put some scrap paper under your work to protect the surface of your table from the glue.

Stick your cardboard down in the centre of the paper, and trim away the corners so that when you glue everything up there’s less bulk and you have edges that are nice and neat.

To do this, make a light guide fold all the way around against the edges of the cardboard, then cut the corners away just inside those fold marks. It’s super important here that you don’t cut away right up to the edge of the cardboard. You need to leave at least a few millimetres of slack in the paper so that you can completely cover the corners when you glue everything up.

When all your corners are cut away, glue the top and the bottom edges in, using pressure from your bone folder to wrap the edges around the board and make them as crisp and neat as possible.

When you’re ready to glue up the sides of the cover, use the pointed end of your bone folder first to push in the little bit of excess paper at the corners, and then glue up the sides in the same way as the ends. Wrap both your covers in a piece of waxed paper to stop an excess glue getting where it shouldn’t, and leave them to dry for a while under a small weight.

When you’re ready to add the covers to your book, glue up one page at the end of the book and carefully stick the cover in place. When that’s done, glue the page at the other end and stick the second cover in place. Fold up the book and check that the two covers line up, and make any adjustments that are needed while the glue is still wet.

Put some pieces of waxed paper in between the covers and the other pages of the book to stop any glue from leaking out, and leave it for a while under a weight or book press to dry completely. And that’s it, you’re done!