wavemakerlab-blog

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A sixth grader helping first graders with stop motion animation!

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Making happening in Mr. Barker’s class.  The challenge is to design and build a vehicle propelled by a chemical reaction.

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Almost every student at Hope, from kindergarten to sixth grade, participated in the Hour of Code.  My main takeaway was... I think everyone loves coding.  It was great to see students pushing through challenges and supporting each other! 

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Recently in the lab we put our Kid Pix skills and powers of description to the test.  One person had to give the best description they could of a drawing of a robot, and their artist partner had to draw the robot without seeing the drawing.  Afterwards we compared the original and the new creation to see how close we could get.  

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5 posts!  Make that six!

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Prototyping scribble machines for the lab.  These are so much fun!

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More papercrafting from week 2!  Pop-up cards and more!

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Let the making begin!! We had a great time making these exploding envelopes today. From kindergarten through sixth grade - everybody loves ‘em!

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Cool site!  Get making :)

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Let’s make these and use as our design notebooks!

Making Notebooks: a brief guide

Book making is one of the coolest and simplest projects to undertake. There’s a really good chance you have everything you need in your home already, and the product is not only satisfying, but useful. It’s an excellent first step into the world of making and can be a place for your thoughts, ideas, plans, designs, doodles, poems…whatever. Reid has been doing book making in our weekend workshops all month long and we’ve made some super cool notebooks with amazing embellishments, decorations and designs, but if you haven’t been able to come check it out here’s a quick tutorial to get you doing some simple bookbinding at home.

The first thing you’ll need to do is assemble your supplies. We use chipboard cut to size but any thin but sturdy cardboard will do. Think backs of notepads or cereal boxes, anything that’s not too thick. You want something thin enough to bend but sturdy enough to support your paper. The backing should be slightly larger than you paper is when laid out flat. For this notebook we use sheets of 8 ½ x 11 inch copy paper and a quarter inch margin of backing around the the pages on each side is plenty. You’ll also need sheets of filler paper, (we used 10 sheets of copy paper), embroidery floss and a needle for the binding, binder clips, a large nail, a hammer, and some kind of board or foam that it’s safe to hammer into.

Materials:

Backing

10 Sheets of paper

embroidery floss

embroidery needle

binder clips

large nail

hammer

scrap wood or foam block

Once you’ve gathered all your materials you need to line up your paper and backing. I like to start by folding all of my paper sheets in half, and separately folding my backing in half. This means I get a good sharp crease in all of my sheets as well as in my chipboard. It’s easier to fold the chipboard down a straight edge, so you can insert a ruler or use the edge of a table or counter to get that nice fold.

After you’ve folded your paper and backing you’ll want to open them up again and clip them together with binder clips. Open up the paper and lay it flat on top of the opened up backing. It won’t reach the edges completely but should be close enough for you to clip it in place. 

Put a binder clip on each side to keep the pages in place while you punch the holes and sew the binding.

When you’ve got your pages all clipped up, lay your booklet open (paper side up) on your foam block or piece of scrap wood, lining up the crease from the folds with the foam or the wood (we’re about to hammer into it so you want to make sure they’re lined up).

Start your first hole at the top of the binding in the crease. Hammer the nail all the way down, through all of the pages and your backing. It’s alright if it goes into the foam/wood. That’s what it’s there for, you just want to make sure you don’t hammer it in so far you can’t wiggle it out. Pull out the nail and move down the seam about a quarter to a half an inch and add another hole. Continue in this manner until you’ve reached the bottom of the page. You’re now ready to sew your binding.

The appropriate length of thread always turns out to be about the length of your outstretched arms. So grab the end of the thread, and unroll slowly with the other hand until your arms are stretched wide, snip it off and you’re ready to thread your needle.

 Embroidery needles have a slightly larger eye and are therefore a bit easier to thread, however a needle threader is always helpful. No matter how you do it, once you get that thread through the eye you want to pull it until it’s doubled and then knot the two ends together (an overhand knot will do).

Once your needle is threaded and your knot is tied you can begin sewing the binding, be sure to keep those binder clips on until you’re all done. I like to start with the knot on the outside (meaning the back/chipboard) and go up through to the paper but it works either way. Make sure you’re going through all the layers here from the backing all the way up through all ten sheets and pull until the knot reaches the backing. Then go back down through the next hole in the paper and pull until taught again. 

Continue in this  fashion until you’ve reached the opposite end of the book then go back the other direction toward where you started. This time you want to sew in and out of every opposite hole thereby closing up the white space gaps between the binding. It’ll look like this:

When you get back to the top where you started you can tie off your thread and cut the remainder at whatever length you like (sometimes a longer thread is nice for a bookmark).

Now you can finally unclip your binder clips and close up your notebook. You’re done! Add embellishments, a clasp a pocket or anything you’d like. This little beauty is yours. And…if you’re looking for something to fill it with starting next month we’ll be doing a daily sketchbook challenge so be sure to check back for that post on July 31st.

Until next time…

-Annalise

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Here we GO!