The weather over the last few days has been just gorgeous, so I’ve been spending a lot of time in the park with my puppy Basel and his best friend Buster. So this project is a nice and simple one that I completed while watching TV one night. But I think it is so cute and just perfect for craft shows, so I can’t wait to make some more!
My parents are moving, and so all of our family’s unnecessary junk is coming out of the woodworks. Including my dad’s collection of random paperback books that he read once and doesn’t need to see again. Recently I feel like I’ve been seeing so many projects around the cyber universe that are made with book pages, and I really wanted to try some of my own. Especially this project. Not only is it adorable but it is so functional too! If you couldn’t tell, its a book that has been folded and made into a business card holder. It even works for post cards too!
As I said, this project was really easy. You simply start folding the pages of a book in half, and you keep folding until you have a nice open fan. My book was approximately 400 pages long, and I didn’t think I would need that many. I ended up using 300 pages, before cutting the back section off. I probably could have just kept folding, but I figured this way I would have another smaller piece of book to work with. In retrospect it might have been better if I had just split the book in half from the start, and then could have made two complete fans. But you live and learn.
I’m also not sure how she got her spine to lay flat, mine curved with the arc of my pages, but maybe that’s because I was using a much bigger book. I have actually wondered what would have happened if I glued my book cover flat before I began folding. Maybe I’ll try that technique for the next one I make. I know my pages weren’t always exactly lined up with each other, but once the whole thing is together you don’t really notice.
I also didn’t have any nice wood for the base, so I took some scrap cardboard (I happened to have a big Priority Mail box that had arrived in the mail earlier that day) and I cut it down to size, glued two pieces together for extra strength, and then covered the edges with additional pieces of book page. Once the fan is glued down you barely notice the base, but it makes the whole piece sturdier and gives it a nice completed look.
This project was loads of fun, but I still have a whole bag of other books so I can’t wait to see what other projects I can come up with. Stay tuned, hopefully I’ll be posting some updates with other book projects soon!
Ciao, Allison
the 3 R's blog 
Great project!
It reminds me of when I was a kid, my mom showed us how to turn her old Reader’s Digests into Christmas trees. We’d even spray paint them green and hot glue on little beads. A fun craft for a kid but they just collected dust until they fell apart.
This is so useful and really great looking! I bet it could also hold mail, receipts, and stuff on a desk!
That’s very cool. I’m not sure that I get enough business cards to need a business card holder, but maybe you could put little pictures etc in it and display them like that?
I don’t get enough business cards from other people either. But my idea is that I could use this for when I sell my products at craft fairs, and use it to hold my own business cards, and that way it is a statement piece that reminds people to take my business card with them if they like my designs.
But, I can certainly see it for photos, or notes, or just to hold mementos like ticket stubs from a special trip or even just everyday life.
This would definitely make a great desk organizer, especially for someone who keeps a selection of other people’s business cards lying around. I’m also thinking I might try gluing a bunch of magazines together and making a really big one, then using it to sort mail by my front door. It would make quite a statement piece to say the least!
I’ve seen those trees as another good project to do with a book or magazine, though I’ve never figured out how you get the page to fold evenly since its a rectangle. I guess I just need to look at one of the tutorials one of these days.
i loved it very much, i am going to try this next week………..for sure…. thank you for this gr8
Pingback: Business Card Folder « « Karen Speaks Karen Speaks
Pingback: How to reuse an old book | How to Reuse it Creatively
The difference betw. your card holder and the other one that lays flat is the binding. She uses a perfect-bound paperback with a glued spine, while by the looks of it you have used a German-bound hardcover, with signatures and a stitched spine. I can\’t tell exactly from the photos, but that\’s what it looks like. So with the perfect-bound book, she is starting with a spine that is naturally flat, while the German-bound book has a natural curve. I like your better though actually, as it still retains that bookish feel.
Actually I used a cheap paperback, a mystery thriller from my dad’s excess book collection if I remember correctly. However I chose not to glue down the binding before beginning to fold the book, and then later glued it onto a piece of cardboard. So the spine of the book I used was a perfect-bound flat spine, but it became curved because I folded so many pages (If I had used less of the book, it would have been flatter.) I think if I had used a slimmer book to start with it would have remained flatter. I also think you could glue it down to the cardboard before folding the pages and that would work too. Personally I love the piece of wood she’s used as her base, but I didn’t have access to anything like that…
Did you fold all the pages the same direction or half of them one way and the other half the opposite way?
That is an excellent question Tiffany, and honestly I can’t remember what I did. I don’t think it really matters, I do remember that it gets hard after a while to fold them all in the same direction, so I either started folding from the other side, so it was half and half meeting in the middle, or I just turned the book around and folded the opposite direction, but because I had turned the book it resulted in all being in the same direction in the end. If that makes sense… Sorry I can’t remember more specifically, I think as long as you are consistent and aren’t switching directions every other page, whatever you do will look just great.
Awesome ok thank you I just started it so I’m excited to see how it turns out! Thanks again
Pingback: Derfor skal du IKKE kaste de gamle bøkene dine! | Kreative Idéer
Pingback: Get Your Home Organized With Goodwill - MomAdvice