How to Make a Concertina Book

Follow these instructions to make a concertina book, which is an origami-looking pop-up book. It has a cover at either end and six folded pieces of paper in between.

Steps

Cut a square of mount board (thick cardboard) about 3 inches square.
Cut a piece of paper slightly larger than the cardboard and cut across the corners, gluing the paper to the card and over the edges. The paper needs to completely cover the inside edges but it is not necessary to cover the very middle because the folded papers will be glued on here.
Fold a square piece of paper in half lengthwise.
Open the paper back up.
Fold the paper in half the other way.
Open the paper back up.
Turn the paper over.
Fold the paper diagonally, press the edge well and open out. Just do this on one diagonal, not both.
Turn the paper over again and push the corners with the diagonal folds towards each other. When folded flat it will be a square a quarter the area of the whole piece.
Repeat with all six pieces of paper.
Put the papers in the order you want to glue them on.
Put glue all over one square side of the paper. Try not to get any glue along the edges or it may make them stick together. Wipe any excess off.
Place the glued side on to the wrong side of the cover centrally and press it down.
Press down hard so that it sticks! If you use a glue stick it should stay in place fairly quickly.
Put glue on to the second piece of folded paper and position it on top of the first the same way round (IE. so that the corner with the ‘flaps’ is towards you).
Turn the whole thing round 180 degrees so that the folded corner without the flaps is towards you and the corner with the flaps is away from you.
Put glue on the next piece of paper and position it on top of the rest with the corner with the flaps towards you (IE. the opposite way round from the rest of the pages).
Do the same with the next piece of paper and then turn it 180 degrees again and put the last two pieces of paper on top so that they are facing the same way as the first two you did.
Put glue on the top page, line up the cover level with the bottom cover and stick it on, wrong side on to the paper.
Now press the whole thing down well to stick it together nicely.
Open it up carefully and check none of the pages are stuck where they shouldn’t be. If they are, pry them apart. This should be fairly easy if you haven’t been too wild with the glue. It is important to do this now, before the glue has dried hard. If there are any gobs of glue on any of the edges, wipe them off carefully with your fingers.
Finished.