How to make your own childrens story book.

Back in May 2016,  I lead an art collaboration on YouTube.  We as a group of artists made bedtime stories on video using our art skills.  It was a whole heap of fun to do.  Here is how I made the book.  If you prefer not to read the instructions there is a video available if you scroll to the end of this post.

This is a list of materials I used, you can use what ever alternatives you want to.
Media paper by Daler Rowney
Faber-Castell Pitt artist pen (black sx)
masking tape (good sticky tape)
metal ruler
craft knife
Scissors
HB lead pencil by Staedler
Eraser
Windsor and Newton cotman watercolour travel set
round size 10, 6 and 4 graduate brushes by Daler Rowney

First I drafted a story outline so I had an idea how many pages I needed and what characters I needed to draw.  I used single sheets of paper to draw all my characters as seen here......

I then constructed the book (trimming off the rough edges before I did so) using masking tape so it could be drawn and painted over if needed. I would place the masking tape over the edge of one page, leaving at least half the width of the masking tape exposed to stick onto a second page.  This stuck the first two pages together and the masking tape became the centre fold. So the pages were  stuck well together and so there was no sticky parts of the masking tape exposed to stick I taped both sides of the join.  It becomes a little more complicated to explain by words now but I will do my best and hopefully with the add of the photographs it will make it clear what I did.  Alternatively you can watch the video to see exactly how I did this part.  So for the next add of a page. I closed the first two pages as you would a book and stuck the masking tape to the back of the edge leaving half the tape exposed.  Then placed the next page on top of where it would be if it was a page in a book (in other words it was three pages on top of each other facing the right way) and brought the masking tape up and over the pages.  This then gave me the hinge/fold to open the page as if I was turning the page and stick the masking tape down the middle.  I repeated this step until there were no pages to add.  

tape facing down on the back right side flip page over 

place next page down bring tape (sticky side up) up and over to stick on next page

flip over and tape down the middle 

do the same with all pages until you have something that looks like this

next I drew round the characters in permanent pen, that way I could use watercolour paints to colour all my characters

once the characters were all coloured in, I then hand wrote my story in pencil first to make sure it fitted the page well and then used my permanent ink pen again to write over the pencil and erased all pencil lines, including the guidelines I drew to ensure I wrote my words in a straight line.

I knew my story featured a little girl in a garden crying and her pets all approaching her one by one to ask why she was crying and try to comfort her.  To draw and paint the little girl on every page would have been many hours of work so I came up with a cunning plan.  I decided to have a tip out pagethat featured the girl and every time I turned the page a new character was beside the girl.  This tip out page was added the same way as the other pages only on the left side this time. As you can see in the following photo.....

To watch the full how to make a story book video click on the video below:

I hope this blog post has been helpful.  I certainly enjoyed making this project and hope to do more in the future. If you have any questions or thoughts please leave me a comment below.  I would love to hear from you.  Maybe you have a suggestion of what my next project should be.  If you do not want to miss out on future blog posts why not subscribe to my blog, so you know when the next post is available.  Have a great day until next time bye for now. T x