Introduction: Clear Cut & Fold Book Folding Pattern - Very Easy and Fast to Practice This Method of Creating Folded Book Art

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Making folded book art as a gift for someone is a perfect and very personalized way to show people some appreciation. By creating something yourself you're showing you've put effort into the gift, which will be much more appreciated than just buying a gift from a store.

Most people who are familiar with folded book art know about the measure and mark method, which is the oldest way of creating your own folded book art. There is a newer method available, the cut and fold method, which allows you to add more detail to your folded book art. A few years ago I wrote an instructable about the measure and mark method. Now it's time to write an instructable about this new cut & fold method.

The website that I use for all of my patterns (measure and mark & cut and fold) is this one:

Folded Book Art Patterns.

They also offer two free try out patterns, which are the ones I have made my instructables about.

Step 1: Materials and Supplies You Need

To get the best possible results you need the following items:

  • Pencil
  • Metric ruler (if you don't have one, foldedbookartpatterns.com is offering a downloadable one)
  • Suitable hard back book
  • Scissors
  • Piece of thicker paper
  • Optional: Folding tool (for this try out pattern you can use your finger nails as well. If you're going to do more designs, a folding tool is recommended to create sharper creases and to save your finger nails. You can get one here).

Step 2: Placing Your Book

Place the book in front of you as if you are going to read it.

After that, turn it counter-clockwise like in the image.

Step 3: Calculate the Beginning Page

We need our pattern to be in the middle of the book, so an equal amount of pages are surrounding the pattern.

To do this we need to do a little simple math.

  1. Select the last even numbered page in your book and divide this by 2.
  2. You now have the number of sheets in your book.
  3. Subtract the number of sheets to be folded (you can find this in the pattern) from this number. For this try out pattern the number of sheets to be folded is 64.
  4. You now have the starting page of the pattern. If the number is even, please add 1 to it to make it an odd number. The starting page always needs to be an odd number.

Example: If your book has a last pagenumber of 200, we'll calculate the starting page as following:

  • 200 / 2 = 100
  • 100 - 64 = 36
  • 36 + 1 = 61

Step 4: Marking the Pages

Open the book on the starting page that you calculated in the previous step.

Take your ruler and line up the zero in the top left of the page. Leave a little room between the edge of the page and the ruler to place the marks.

Start with the first mark of the pattern. Place a little mark on the exact place the pattern indicates. After this, DO NOT MOVE YOUR RULER. Look at the pattern and place the second mark. If there are more marks needed to be placed on the page, place these as well on the exact place the pattern indicates.

Continue marking the pages until you have reached the end of the pattern.

PATTERN CUT & FOLD

Please note that the pattern is in centimeters and millimeters.

  • Page 1: 8,2 & 9,1
  • Page 2: 7,7 & 9,6
  • Page 3: 7,4 & 9,9
  • Page 4: 7,2 & 10,2
  • Page 5: 7,0 & 10,5
  • Page 6: 6,9 & 10,6
  • Page 7: 6,8 & 10,8
  • Page 8: 6,7 & 11,0
  • Page 9: 6,6 & 11,2
  • Page 10: 6,5 & 11,4
  • Page 11: 6,4 & 11,5
  • Page 12: 6,4 & 11,7
  • Page 13: 6,3 & 11,8
  • Page 14: 6,3 & 11,9
  • Page 15: 6,2 & 12,1
  • Page 16: 6,2 & 12,2
  • Page 17: 6,2 & 12,3
  • Page 18: 6,2 & 12,4
  • Page 19: 6,2 & 9,0 & 10,0 & 12,6
  • Page 20: 6,2 & 8,8 & 10,3 & 12,7
  • Page 21: 6,2 & 8,7 & 10,5 & 12,8
  • Page 22: 6,3 & 8,6 & 10,7 & 12,9
  • Page 23: 6,3 & 8,5 & 10,8 & 13,0
  • Page 24: 6,4 & 8,4 & 10,9 & 13,1
  • Page 25: 6,4 & 8,4 & 11,1 & 13,2
  • Page 26: 6,5 & 8,4 & 11,2 & 13,3
  • Page 27: 6,6 & 8,4 & 11,3 & 13,4
  • Page 28: 6,7 & 8,4 & 11,4 & 13,5
  • Page 29: 6,8 & 8,5 & 11,6 & 13,7
  • Page 30: 6,9 & 8,5 & 11,6 & 13,7
  • Page 31: 7,0 & 8,6 & 11,7 & 13,8
  • Page 32: 7,2 & 8,8 & 11,8 & 13,8
  • Page 33: 7,4 & 8,8 & 11,8 & 13,9
  • Page 34: 7,2 & 8,7 & 11,7 & 13,8
  • Page 35: 7,0 & 8,6 & 11,7 & 13,7
  • Page 36: 6,9 & 8,5 & 11,6 & 13,7
  • Page 37: 6,7 & 8,4 & 11,5 & 13,6
  • Page 38: 6,6 & 8,4 & 11,4 & 13,5
  • Page 39: 6,5 & 8,4 & 11,2 & 13,4
  • Page 40: 6,5 & 8,4 & 11,1 & 13,3
  • Page 41: 6,4 & 8,4 & 11,0 & 13,2
  • Page 42: 6,4 & 8,5 & 10,8 & 13,1
  • Page 43: 6,3 & 8,5 & 10,7 & 13,0
  • Page 44: 6,3 & 8,6 & 10,5 & 12,9
  • Page 45: 6,2 & 8,8 & 10,3 & 12,8
  • Page 46: 6,2 & 8,9 & 10,1 & 12,6
  • Page 47: 6,2 & 12,5
  • Page 48: 6,2 & 12,4
  • Page 49: 6,2 & 12,3
  • Page 50: 6,2 & 12,2
  • Page 51: 6,2 & 12,0
  • Page 52: 6,3 & 11,9
  • Page 53: 6,3 & 11,8
  • Page 54: 6,4 & 11,6
  • Page 55: 6,4 & 11,5
  • Page 56: 6,5 & 11,3
  • Page 57: 6,6 & 11,2
  • Page 58: 6,7 & 11,0
  • Page 59: 6,8 & 10,8
  • Page 60: 6,9 & 10,6
  • Page 61: 7,1 & 10,4
  • Page 62: 7,3 & 10,2
  • Page 63: 7,5 & 9,9
  • Page 64: 7,8 & 9,5

Step 5: Prepare the Book for Folding

After marking all the pages according to the pattern it's time to start folding.

To do this, turn the book towards you (like in the image).

Now there are two possible options.

  • If there are only two marks on the page, you don't need to do anything for now
  • If the page has multiple marks, you do the following:
    1. Use a scissors to cut the inner marks about 1,5-2 centimeters deep.
    2. DO NOT CUT THE TWO OUTER MARKS (see the image)

Now repeat the above steps for the rest of the pages, until you run out of marked pages.

Step 6: Folding the Pages

Now it's time to start folding.

Go back to the first marked page in the book.

Again, there are two possible options now:

  1. If there are only two marks on the page, fold the pages in a 90 degrees angle (like in the image). If you can't fold the page in a 90 degrees angle, please try to fold it as closely to 90 degrees as possible.
  2. If there are multiple marks on the page, do the following:
    1. Fold the outer two marks in a 90 degrees angle (like in the image)
    2. The inner marks need to be folded to the inside.
    3. For this take the thicker piece of paper and place it to the edge of the page. You can cut it to fit the book you're using. Make sure there's about 1-1,5 centimeters left to the edge of the page. (see the image)
    4. Now start from the left or the right and fold the first available section to the inside. Leave the next as is and fold the next one again to the inside. In this try-out pattern there's only one section to be folded to the inside, so that's even easier.
    5. Repeat the steps above until you've finished all the marked pages.

Step 7: You're Finished

If you've followed the previous steps correct, you should have created your first cut and fold piece of folded book art. Easy right?

It looks complicated, but it really isn't. All of the cut and fold patterns offered on https://www.foldedbookartpatterns.com work in this same way. So if you know how to do this one, you can do them all. Some just take a little more work than others.

Have a look in their cut and fold section and see if there's something you fancy. You can also have them design custom patterns to your needs, so there should be something you like.