My Maharajah's Palace Projects-Books (Indian Miniature Painting)

This post was 1st published on My Maharajah's Palace-Day 19

LET BOOKS be your dining table, And you shall be full of delights Let them be your mattress And you shall sleep restful nights-annonymous

A book is like carrying a garden in a pocket-Chinese proverb.

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. ~Anna Quindlen,

I love books and that's why in every dollhouse that I build, there must always be room for a library. And since I am a bit of a bibliophile, I too hope to collect miniature books for my palace. My library, big or mini will be one that's overflowing with books, none of these dainty chiffonier lined with only a dozen books.

So at the start of this year, I went and bought some "do it yourself kit" from paperminis.com, hoping to learn how to make my own books before I know enough to buy the collectibles. The kits arrived at work this morning and when I came home, I set about making my 1st book. Its not a papermini book but one of my own, titled "Indian Miniature Paintings".

It took me 4 hours from start to finish. And this is what I did:

I brought out the tools that I would need: glue, a used aluminium candle holder to hold the glue, toothpick for application, steel ruler, craft knife, pencil, scissors, 2 tiny clothes pegs and the black woven cloth tape which I wanted to use for the book cover.

I then cut out the blank pages of the book in 1 long strip and then fold the pages accordion style.

I next glued the back of the pages together to form the inside of the book. Full instructions for the above steps can be found at the paperminis' website.

As this is my 1st book, I have decided to make a fairly rudimentary black cover with very little adornment. Nonetheless, I had read somewhere on how a headband would add that extra zing to any mini book and so I spent a big part of the 4 hours making and gluing the tiniest strip of gold thread on the spines. I had also wanted a gold ribbon bookmark but by the time I finished gluing the headband, I was too blind and dizzy (see left for pic taken when I was slightly giddy).

The fun part was cutting "pages" from the printouts I did sometime back, of Indian miniature paintings. Of course, I picked only the love scenes and the "inscriptions".

The final product is my book of love (6/8" h, 11/16" w, 1/8" thick)

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