Making Book Barrettes

The books I chose were: Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross, The Phoenix Keeper by S.A. MacLean, Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett, Jade City by Fonda Lee, Anastasia by Sophie Lark, Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas, Babel by R.F. Kuang, and I couldn't help a little self promo: Nightmare Sky: Stories of Astronomical Horror edited by Red Lagoe (featuring a short story by me!)

I was recently scrolling on Instagram and was shown an add for a barrette with little books on it. I liked the concept, but the books had plain leather covers without titles. I've seen tiny books in other places; some people make tiny books of every book they read for the year, there's a mindfulness toy where you put tiny books on a tiny bookshelf, etc. So I thought, why not make tiny books of books I love and put those on barrettes instead. I made them and I LOVE them! I didn't take many photos during the process, but here's how I did it:

I followed this guide initially, but ended up having to make lots of adjustments.

Materials: 
2 ~4inch long barrettes with a nice wide surface area for gluing
​Several sheets of plain paper
Scissors and/or a paper slicer
Needle and thread (color doesn't matter)
Glue (I used both rubber cement and super glue for different portions)
Printer
Microsoft Word
Measuring tape (ideally with inches and cm)

Step 1: Make the Pages
You don't necessarily need to have real pages in your books, you can replace them with a little rectangle (2cm wide, 3cm tall, 1cm deep) of foam or cardboard. However, if you want pages, here's how:

• Cut 3cm by 4cm rectangles from plain paper. You'll need 10 for every book you make, and 4 books per barrette. 
• Fold each rectangle in half so they look 2cm by 3cm (aka hamburger style) and really press that seam with whatever you have handy. I used the flat butt of a pen and it did fine. 
• Nest five of these folded pages together.
• Sew along the fold. Keep the knots on the outside edge, rather than the inside of the book, to allow the pages to close better. This will take 2-3 stitches, so don't feel intimidated if you aren't into sewing.
• Do this until you have two bundles for every book you plan to make.

Step 2: Make the Covers

• Select the books you want to recreate. 
• Use Google images, Amazon, Goodreads, etc. to find images of the front cover, back cover, and spine. (The spines were trouble for me, see below to help if this plagues you too.)
• Copy the image and paste into Microsoft Word. In Word, change the size of the images (and deselect the option to maintain the current aspect ratio):
  • Front/back covers: 1.33 inches tall, 0.95 inches wide
  • Spine: 1.33 inches tall, 0.19 inches wide. 
• Arrange the images to that the back cover is on the left, then the spine, then the front cover, and all are touching.
• If you struggle to find an image of the spine alone, crop an image of the book from a bookstack. If no images of the spine exist (maybe it's a super new book) just crop the title from the cover image. These will end up tiny, so imperfections aren't a huge deal. 
• Print your images. 

The books held together by binder clips

Step 3: Glue It Together

• Cut your book wraps (back + spine + cover) out of the paper as one ribbon.
• Fold along the seams on each side of the spine.
• I reinforced mine with a slightly thicker paper (I used rubber cement for this, as rubber cement doesn't cause paper to curl.) But I used three distinct pieces of paper, aligned with the folds, so the folds had less resistance.
• Glue the pages in by putting glue on the sewn spines, the first page, and the last page. Sandwich into the covers, which will be slightly larger than the pages. I used a binder clip to hold them together overnight, but anything that will press them (heavy book, chip clip, etc.) will do the job. I once again used rubber cement here, to prevent the paper from curling. 
• The next day, with all books dry, place glue (here I switched to super glue for more hold) on the barrette and arrange the books so the barrette is just about in the middle of their backs. It's okay if the books hang beyond the ends of the barrette, mine do and I like it better that way.

Left: the barrettes from the front. Right: the barrettes from the back

My barrettes turned out so cute and I cannot wait to wear them to the conference I'm attending later this month. I think they're great conversation starters. One features comps for the book I'll be pitching and the other features books I love to chat about. Because I owned all of the supplies except for the barrettes, this project only cost me $3.

If you try this craft, let me know how it goes!