Spring wildlife

 A Book of Spring Wildlife
make your own concertina book

In the first of a series of events Celebrating Woodlands working with Stone and Water and Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, we invite you make your own Book of Spring Woodlands. We made boos like this on a very damp day in Corbar Woods on Tuesday 27th May. But if you would lie to make your own book, why not rummage around at home, find some bits and pieces and have a go...

 

You will need:

·      1 piece of thin cardboard (about 15cm x 10.5cm) - cereal packet card is a good weight

·      scissors

·      glue or a gluestick

·      paper for the bookblock (see below)

·      pencils, wax crayons, coloured pencils, scrap paper…

·      if you want some line drawings to get you started, you could print off the pdf sheet here

 

Make your bookblock: this is the set of pages that make the body of the book. You might use a long strip of paper (A2 (flipchart sized) cut into quarters lengthwise works well and makes 4 books – or one very long one) or take a sheet of A4 (standard printer size) and cut or tear it in half lengthways. Overlap the ends by about 1cm and stick them together (see below)

 

Write a poem for a page?

Falling sky splinters
Into scabious and cornflower blue,
While tormentil nestles in the grass,
Droplets of sunshine on the green

 

that first set of folds

Concertina: fold your strip of paper in half and then in half again. Unfold it: this should give you 8 sections of about the same size. Use those folds as guides to now fold the paper into a zig-zag pattern

 

folded to give a concertina

 

Try an acrostic perhaps? 

M - many harvest mice hiding

I  - in the long grass, swaying,

C - curl up in careful nests

E - every night in safety. 

 

Now you are ready to make your book! It is easier to work on the book before you fit it into the cover. Work on one side of your paper. On your pages you might:

• write
• draw
• add a patch of scrap paper and draw on that
• make a pocket
• do a rubbing
• print
• add a map
• make a pop-up
• think of something else…. 

Beetle stamps....

add a pocket

how about a map?

 

When it is done decide if you are having 

a) a book that unfolds completely – stick one end page into the cover. You could now work on the back side of your pages (Beetle stamps picture above: stick one end of the finished block into the cover)”

Or 

b) a book that is fixed at both ends. If you are going for this, you might need to refold your concertina so it looks like the picture below(Both ends ready to glue in)

 

Cover: fold the card in half. Decorate the cover. Glue in the book block….Title? Author?

 

would a feather fit into your book?

 

Please, send us a picture of your finished book! creepingtoad@btinternet.com

 

Thanks to the Buxton Civic Association for letting us be inspired by Corbar Woods

Derbyshire Wildlife Trust's Community Fund for being able to offer this event to y'all

 

NEXT EVENT: summer in Lightwood Nature Reserve on 6th July