Easy Mini Books

I came across this simple idea in Jane Harrop's 'Thirties and Forties' book. Simply a book jacket printout glued to a piece of balsa and aged with a wash of dirty brown. I adpated it a little bit. But it goes as follows. I found a heap of book covers via Google books. You can find entire libraries online with complete books. After saving the image I change the resolution to 300dpi and re size them to fit 1 inch scale. Increasing resolution gives a finer detailed printout. I do it all in Photoshop. Print them out and then to set the ink I give the paper a spray of matt. Then cut out. To a length of balsa I round of one side by rubbing it along sandpaper to give the look of a spine. I use a Bostick glue stick all over the balsa and glue on the printie. Along the page edges I use a round needle file to rough up the balsa and it gives the appearance of pages. Plus adds the convexed look of a large book. If you don't have a needle file I reckon a small piece of sandpaper on a toothpick might do it. You could also use the pointy bit of the pick to 'scratch' the balsa. Then a quick going over with a very watered down raw umber and pat down. I found the process of scruffing up the balsa can sometimes curl up the paper cover giving a great dog eared look. I use different thickness balsa as well. 1mm through to 3mm. I've got a printout of an old Bible I will use 5mm for that. Great for using up my containers of bits of balsa. That's it. These look great stacked together. I have just completed 100 printies!!! Argh. Took two days. The weather isn't too great and good for sitting in front of my PC. They are printed out and waiting for pages.