Make your own book from card and paper

1   Choose 6 pieces of A4 paper. Here we have chosen recycled card for the book cover. The inside pages consist of one sheet of watercolour paper and four sheets of coloured paper. Fold the sheets in the middle to make them into A5 size.

2   Place all the sheets of paper on top of each other with the recycled card at the bottom. Attach a foldback clip on each side and push holes along the folded spine with a cross stitch needle. Make the first hole 0.5 cm from the edge and make a total of 11 holes along the spine 2 cm apart. A tip: you may wrap a balloon around the needle when making the holes, to prevent the needle from slipping between your fingers.

3   Cut a 60 cm piece of cotton cord and stitch the spine of the book together with tacking stitches along the length of the spine as shown in the photo. Sew back again with tacking stitches.

4   Tie a knot on the outside and trim the excess cord. The book is now ready for decoration.

5   Use punched-out shapes and different colours of handmade paper for decoration. Attach the decoration onto the pages in the book using a glue stick.

6   Use masking tape for the edges and for making frames etc.

7   Stamp text on white paper using wooden stamps and an ink stamp pad.

8   Make small pockets from paper for notes, pictures, photos etc.

9   Use Color Bar paper with a white core for small collages or as a background for a another decoration etc.

10   You may build up the pages around various themes. Here the theme is 'hedgehogs'.

11   Decorate with small stickers to enhance pictures, photos, themes and atmosphere.

12   You may write poems, rhymes and chants.

13   Draw or make watercolour drawings directly on the watercolour paper.