to read or not to read ...

.... well: not to read it is! I definitely like it that some miniaturebooks are readable (I have one or two saved in my files to make someday), I think it's great and fun. But realism eventually always wins 'in my book', pun intended :D

I made the Animal Farm book last week, with the one I made a little while ago this makes two complete (meaning with text inside) modern-mini-books, woehooe :) ! They have doublesided printed pages on very thin paper. I will also make more of the kind I used in my last scene (blank pages), 'cause it's not necessary at all to have all books like this, would be kind of crazy too right? ;)

the newer book has a funny title, it literally translates: "the 100-year-old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared". The story is about a man who turns 100 and doesn't feel like all the celebrations and fuss, the Mayor etc, so he takes off and has all kinds of crazy adventures. Sounds like fun right? It's from a Swedish writer and it was the best selling book in Sweden in 2010, I'd like to read it myself sometime. The pages in my miniversion are from the real book, the first 10 pages that is. I found them on an online bookstore as a preview. I just repeated them another 2 or 2,5 times until I had enough pages.

will mini-people actually read it and find out the story is kind of stuck in a loop? Guess I'll have to take the chance and be prepared for some namecalling ;)

and what's a book without a bookmark? this one is from a drawing I made in another lifetime ;)

Animal Farm is a repetition of a few pages, just pages 10, 11, 28 and 29, the only ones I could find and then I altered some to make a bit of sense in the (visual) chronology.

obviously Animal Farm is a bit older than the other, so I made those pages yellow* and folded the book backwards and the edges and pages. It always feels strange to have to do something to anything new you made with great care, just to make it less new, don't you think? But it has to be done, besides it's all pretty minor in this case, I've seen way worse with some of you ;).
*I let the strip of pages bath in some tea for a few seconds until soaked and then let that dry flat on the countertop. After drying I repeated to get the right amount of yellowness. Then cut them

and another bookmark, this one is from an old RL-painting of mine

and then as that is so to be expected with an older book: a page comes loose (see collage above, the lower-rightcorner), how about - unintended - realism? ;) But some glue made it as 'good as new' again, haha. Getting the pages aligned both sides took a bit of time - and prints - to get right, but is very fulfilling once they do. What I discovered is you can only print the top side of a page, since a printer always pulls paper through slightly crooked, so the further you get the more off it is.

the covers are 800 and 940 dpi. Not to loose any quality I always resize a file by adjusting - read: increasing - the dpi until it's the right amount of cm's that go down by it. Meaning the final dpi-amount differs per file depending on how big it is to begin with. I know that might sound like jibberish, but I've explained this process before in Tutorial Imaged Metal Signs, I just insert it here again, just click on it to be able to read:

luckily I can also set my printer to print high resolutions (up to 4800 dpi), I discovered after several years of never finding it before :D. In combination with special decalpaper that has a different surface than regular decalpaper that supports high res printing, this is the best quality I can achieve. Here's the comparison with something that's officially printed/pressed (often 600 dpi), I cut if from an inlaysheet that came with a RL-magazine once. That to the naked eye looks very crisp and perfect, but you can see the difference once you look closer. How cool is that?

the decalpaper I have and use is waterproof (Sunny Waterproof decal paper), so no varnishing necessary after printing and I also use magic coating paper, you need a laminating machine for (and technically is no paper but a superthin layer of plastic on paper, that you need to remove later). Which is a protective layer with a satin sheen (but is not protecting the seems, but for bookcovers that's not necessary, since real books don't have that either).

the right one is a book already and therefore raised a bit in comparison to the left one (which is still just a flat cover). But it's not the reason for the difference, I can assure you, it's even the right one that my camera focused on..

I'm also very happy with the paper for the pages: it's really thin. It's 50 grams (standard copying/printingpaper is 80 grams). And that's rare, at least in the Netherlands (because I have to do evertything online I don't know this might be different if you ask in copyshops). Paper of 70 grams is not so rare, 60 grams already a little harder to come by (online at least), but 50grams I only found after quite a search trying to find the thinnest paper out there - commercially. Paper used for bibles and such is thinner and would be amazing, but I don't have a clue how to get that. And hey, there's no need to exaggerate: 50 grams (although it's not to scale of course, it IS almost 50% off of the thickness of regular paper) is really great right? I am so happy with it!

for anyone interested to see if you can find it if you like to use this yourself: it's Clairefontaine Smart Print paper 50g/m2. Tip for feeding the printer: because it's so thin you can't just put a page in your printer as with regular kind. But I just put a page on top of a stack of regular paper and put the whole lot in the printerdrawer or -feeder, so it's easily solved!

UPDATE: because already some of you asked and I'm sure more would like to know: the printer I have is an HP Officejet Pro 8500 A910, it's an all-in-one stand alone inkjet printer. It's an oldie, so I don't know wether it still being made (looking for the image it might now be the HP Officejet Pro 8500 plus e-A10 A910?), but maybe with that info you can figure out which is the newer comparable model? Is this okay by the way? I'm not affiliated with HP whatsover, we've just had this printer for years, it was for a very good price once and we've always loved it!


how much can you write about two tiny books? djeeezzz :D But just like to share what I used and stuff, cause I'm always happy with that kind of info from others myself. And anyone who doesn't need to know will just skip all the words and lettery-stuff I'm sure :D

I'd like to add a little preview of something. You probably won't expect this kind of miniature because it's 'huge' compared to what I usually do :D This is what I could do myself (very thin mdf that I could cut with scissors and veneer that's even easier). If everything goes as planned I can have someone visiting me soon saw some wooden paintstirrers for me so I can proceed with the assembling and such.

it's not hard to guess is it? The difference in veneers is not a style-choice by the way, I didn't have enough of the one to cover the entire piece of mdf, so I just added a piece of another kind. It's the back anyway and I think it doesn't even look too weird ;) I've also seen this kind of different woods on the backs of real-life pieces.