Writing Books - and Getting Published

 

On my nephew's wish list is a book kit where you write your own story and send it in and it comes back in published form. I recalled these small journals that Amy over at Angry Chicken makes for her family all the time and decided I had all the materials  to make two for him.

She even made one of her fabulous videos:

I used to do custom picture framing so for my outsides of the book, I used mat board but I think you could also use some cereal box cardboard (two sheets glued or taped together). I used my UPS box knife to cut the mat board just bigger than my paper.
For my book,  I used four sheets of paper, folded in half. I cut the mat board in half, applied the duct tape and stapled the papers in. I now have a long-arm stapler on my wish list.

When you use Amy's trick of opening up your small stapler and stapling into a rubber eraser, you have to push down the prongs before you can go onto the next staple. Tiresome.

This project took me about one hour to complete. It would have been less if I could have found my decorative tapes. I thought this would be the perfect  project to use them on but could I find them?   Twenty  minutes of pulling drawers out, pushing them back in, pulling them out again;  boxes rummaged through to no avail.
Along the way, I found some small envelopes to tape inside the back cover. For whatever.

Nearly everyone has duct tape, 1  ply cardboard (cereal boxes glued together make 2 ply. My mat board is 4-ply (heavier yet), computer paper, a pen and a rubber band.

After work tomorrow, I plan on driving to Michael's to see if they have one of those book kits. I researched amazon.com and saw this one. 

If the price range is near my budget, then I  will go ahead and get it. If it's not, then I can come up with something else to go with these handmade journals.

CAN YOU SEE THE FOG?