My Miniature Library: 30 Tiny Books to Make, Read and Treasure

What a fun product! I've actually had it for a while ago, and just do a few at a time if I need to escape from the world. There's something so soothing about the cutting and folding. The attention to detail in the illustrations and designs are wonderful, the storybooks are actually mini versions of real books, not blank like you find in other kits. There is a great variety, from fairy tales, to botany, to a beautifully colored atlas. My favorites are the ones you can write and illustrate yourself. I let my small children help, either writing it themselves or letting them create a simple story that I fill in. We had the best time cutting and pasting bits from magazines for the "Tiny Treasures" book.There are a few cons. They are a little too big to look in scale for my daughter's dollhouse, so if you are going to incorporate them into another miniature display make sure you check the measurements. The cardboard bookcase doesn't stay together too well and looks cheap compared to the books . These things aside I still give it 5 stars for anyone who loves immersing themselves in miniature worlds.

I recently got hooked on making tiny books. After completing a kit for a tiny library, I wanted to explore learning to make my own little books, both from templates found online and projects like this one, where you have the pieces printed and you cut them out and assemble them.This kit has 30 tiny books. You cut out the pages and fold and glue them, then cut out the covers and glue the pages inside. It isn't difficult and the instructions are very good. The kit comes with a little cardboard bookcase you pop out and put together. I glued the shelves into mine because they didn't stay by themselves.Highly recommended to use a stylus to score the pages before folding. This was something I learned when I was researching making tiny books and it is much easier to fold the pages after scoring rather than trying to fold them unscored. The book comes out looking better. Also, I used a glue stick for gluing the pages, and E-6000 to glue the spine into the cover.I love the colors and high quality paper in this kit.If making these books with children, I'd recommend the parent do the cutting and the kids do the rest, unless the kids have really good fine motor skills. You can either cut out the pages and covers with scissors or with an Exacto knife.Overall, a very fun project and you have lots of tiny books to enjoy once you're done!

Very good quality and assortment of books.

I'm making the books for a 5-year-old, a few at a time, and find it fun and relaxing -- so long as the kitties are elsewhere.A few tips:-- Purchase a "bone" folder/scorer to make sharp, accurate folds. In my experience, folders made of melamine or another non-animal substance work fine.-- Resist the urge to stack two or more pages and cut at once. If you make one boo-boo, you'll wreck more than one book.-- Cut all strips in advance of any assembly. That, plus the covers, took me about 90 minutes. Arrange book titles in alphabetical order, like so: loose book cover, two loose text strips. Repeat. Secure the whole stack with a binder clip. This way you can dive into the set when you have a few moments and not go nuts trying to find which strips go with which covers.-- A glue stick is what you want. Not bottled glue.-- Cats are incapable of behaving like good little buddies during the cutting or assembly process. Paper strips! Glue! Ooooh! The miniature-book scene is simply too bloody much overload.

I bought this item a couple weeks ago and have now made about as many little books as I think I am going to, so it seems like a good time to leave my review.Some of the good things about this set are that the activity is pretty easy to do, and it's pretty fun. I've probably spent 6 or 8 hours making the books, usually sitting in front of the TV and phasing in and out of watching and folding pages. If you have some general craft supplies at home you probably have all you need to finish the books: metal ruler and an X-Acto knife to cut things out, a cutting board topped with pasteboard for a cutting surface, a plastic ruler or similar to make tight folds (the metal ones can leave marks), and glue. I used a spray adhesive to make absolutely sure the pages and covers wouldn't wrinkle. The resulting books have a charm to them as well, like so many tiny things do.On the negative side, there were a few things about the design of the books that I didn't much like. The scale is quite large for most dollhouses; at 1 1/2 inches high, these would look about right for American Girl type dolls, but are too big for typical dollhouses. The pages are printed only on one side and are folded accordion-style, so each page is double (I realize this is a nod to making the books easier to make, so pages don't have to be sewn). And the instructions don't suggest that the spine edge of the pages be glued. This has the effect that finished books tend to splay open a bit on their own, and that the spine isn't tight like it should be -- in fact the pages of a finished book could be pulled out to make a loop with the cover. I also didn't like that all of the books are the same size (a rare thing in any library), and that the design of each was very modern. It would have been nice to have some old-fashioned looking ones, in faux leather covers. Finally, the bookshelf that came with the books is unsatisfying, because it is make of folded cardboard so the corners are not tight and the shelves are not even.Some of these problems can be fixed. I reduced the size of the books I liked best, using 78% and 64% scales, and ended up with a collection in which the atlas and reference books were larger, and the stories were smaller. Doing this muted some colors and erased some of the fold lines (just be really careful to get them even, using previous folds as a guide - it worked ok). It was worth it to me for the overall effect I got.I also glued the spines before adding the covers. To do this, clamp the book shut in a binder clip, and use a thin layer of glue carefully just on the spine. Let this dry, and then glue on the front cover and back cover separately, leaving the spine loose. Make sure there is just the tiniest bit of space between the spine of the pages and the spine of the cover, so the cover opens properly. The look, I think, is a bit tighter and better.I think one of the big advantages to this kit is the realization, when you have done a few, that you can make whatever book you like this way. Create a template in Word for the accordion-style pages, using whatever page size you like; scan pages from any book you want to reproduce and fit them in your template. Or, use text boxes and a tiny font to add your own text. Copy the pages on light, smooth paper and covers on cardstock, and make them up. Consider brushing a bit of matte finish on the finished covers to give a bit more weight.It's very nice that this kit teaches you a method of making little books, but the little books that it offers you, printed up and ready to make, aren't perfect.