Artists' Books

You can make an artist's book now with materials you find around the house! Use these tutorials as inspiration, but don't be intimidated by multi-step processes or tools you don't have. You can always do simpler versions of the techniques below using whatever you have on-hand.  If you'd like to explore more advanced techniques, you can purchase special paper and tools, or purchase a beginner's bookmaking kit like the one below.

PAPER MAKING

Search for homemade paper tutorials online! You can use paper-based materials you find around the house to recycle into homemade paper.  The tutorials you find, like the one below, show you how to make the screen/netting you need, but you can also purchase it online by searching for paper making mould and deckle.

You can also play around with different materials in your house to make a screen and with dyes to change the colors of your paper pulp!

PAPER TREATMENTS

You can also do creative treatments to existing paper, like water marbling.  Let yourself go down a Youtube rabbit hole of watching suggested papermaking/paper treatment videos to find new crafts you didn't know existed, like ecoprinting with plants, paper weaving, and stamping.

If you need materials or tools you don't have, try searching for alternatives online. For example, the water marbling video below mentions using a "surfactant" but if you search for alternatives online you'll see that you can just use dish soap! 

You can bind individual sheets together, or cut/fold a single sheet of paper to create pages.  You can purchase any of the tools you need online, but remember to think creatively about ways to use what you have.  If you don't have a book press, you might have heavy art history books you can use!

Paper Folding

PAPER BINDING

You can borrow techniques from pop-up books (called "moveable books" if you're fancy) by following some tutorials from The Pop-Up Channel