Baby Flip Book Tutorial

I have been asked how to make these flip books, so I decided to post directions up here for anyone else wanting to make one of these oh-so-neat books!

What you need for the base of the book:

• Cover: 6.5” x 12” piece of cardstock - Score at 1.5”, 1.75”, 8.25”, and 8.5”
• Cover extenders: 2” x 6.5” cardstock (x2) - Score in the middle (lengthwise to make a 1” x 6.5” piece) - These will be added to each end of your cover to make your cover completely close. Without them you would have a 2” gap in the front of your book.
• Page Bases: 6” x 12” (x2) and 5.75” x 12” (x2) -Score at 4.5” and 10.5”
• Closure: 4 eyelets and coordinating ribbon (about 20”)

To make the cover, cut your cardstock for the cover and cover extenders. Score all pieces. Attach the extenders to each end of the cover, making sure there is not a gap when book is closed.

Once cover is assembled the pages need to be added. Cut and score all pages. The 6” ones will be the left and right pages and the 5.75” ones will be the top and bottom pages. Here is a diagram to show you how the pages should be placed onto the cover.

When laying out the pages, be sure to leave a little wiggle room at the edges so the pages have enough space to close correctly when all the layers are in there. Once your pages are laid out in the correct positions, glue them down and cover with a piece of cardstock.

To make the album closure, use eyelets to make 4 holes (two on each cover extender). You will weave your ribbon through the eyelets as shown in the image below (don’t you just love my pretty drawings??? Hehe) from the side view, you can see that you need to go all the way around the book. Make sure you leave enough at the end to tie in a bow.

That’s it! Now all you need to do is embellish. Add photo mats and journaling tags and it’s done!

Now, if you want to make the boxes, here is another pretty picture to show how I like to make mine. You may need to click the picture to enlarge to read the notes. Also, please excuse the extra line in there, it looks as though my son was trying to help me!

First I make a square in the middle of a 12 x 12 paper. This should be the size of the box you want. For my books, I made this 6.75” square. Once you have your square, you will need to mark lines to make the sides of the box. I made mine 0.75” sides. You will need to mark two of those lines, going out from your original box. After doing this on all 4 sides, score all these lines. You will need to make 4 cuts as shown in the picture. These cuts will make tabs which will connect the sides together. Fold on all the lines, starting with the sides with the tabs. The other two sides will fold up and over the tabs locking the sides in place. All the triangles will meet in the middle. I like to glue these down just to make sure it doesn’t come undone. You will repeat this for the other part of the box, making sure that when making the top you add about 1/8” all around when drawing your first square. This will help it fit over the bottom.

I hope these are helpful and not too confusing. I should have taken pictures while making these last 2 books, but I did not think of it.

Happy Scrapping!!