Once you realize a book doesn’t have to open flat and read left to right, a whole world cracks open.
So you’ve made a folio. Maybe you’ve folded a zine or two. You’re comfortable scoring a board, wrapping paper around it like a very fancy present, and gluing without gluing your own fingers together (mostly). You’re ready for the good stuff.
Welcome to Level 2, where books stop being flat rectangles and start becoming objects, things that fan out, tunnel inward, pop up, and generally refuse to sit quietly on a shelf. The engineering gets a little more ambitious here. Get ready for paper, folds, and a willingness to experiment.
The Accordion: Your New Best Friend
If you only make one structure from this whole post, make an accordion. It’s the single most versatile book form there is, and it’s almost embarrassingly simple. One long strip of paper, folded back and forth into pleats. That’s it.
The magic is in what that simple move unlocks. An accordion reads page by page like a normal book or stretches out into one long continuous panorama, which makes it perfect for anything with a horizon, a landscape, a timeline, a story that unfolds (literally). Stand it up on a shelf and it becomes a freestanding zigzag sculpture. Glue a cover board to each end and suddenly it looks like a “real” book with a proper spine.
The one thing worth knowing: paper has a grain, just like wood, and it folds crisply with the grain and fights you against it. Fold along the grain and you get clean, sharp pleats. Fold across it and you get a slightly fuzzy, cracked edge. For a long-lasting accordion, find the grain direction first (gently flex the sheet both ways — it gives more easily along the grain) and fold with it. Your future self will thank you.
Once you’ve got the basic pleat down, you can get fancy: join multiple strips to make a really long one, add pop-up elements to the pages, or cut slots and weave a second accordion through the first. The form invites tinkering.
Tunnel Books: Depth You Can Peer Into
Tunnel books are where people gasp. Instead of reading a book front to back, you look through it — layered panels stacked one behind the other, connected by accordion-folded sides, creating a little peep-show diorama with real, physical depth. Think of a theater stage: foreground, midground, background, each on its own cut panel, with space between them.
The illusion is genuinely striking, and it comes from something simple: because your eye has to travel through the layers to reach the back, your brain reads it as deep space, not flat paper. Cut a window in each panel a little larger toward the front and smaller toward the back, and you’ve built a tunnel your eye happily falls into.
They’re a favorite for anything atmospheric, a forest receding into fog, a city street vanishing into distance, an underwater scene with fish suspended at different depths. The accordion sides (see, it comes back around) let the whole thing collapse flat for storage and spring open when you want to look. A little fussier than a plain accordion, deeply worth it.
Going Sculptural: When Books Become Art Objects
Past the accordion and the tunnel, the whole category just opens up, and the line between “book” and “sculpture” gets happily blurry. A few forms worth exploring once you’ve caught the bug:
Flag books thread little flags onto an accordion spine so they flip in alternating directions. Flip the book and the images shuffle and recombine, almost like animation. Star or carousel books fan all the way around until the front and back covers meet and tie together, standing the book up into a full 360-degree scene. Pop-up structures use folds and cuts so elements leap off the page when you open it (this is its own delightful rabbit hole, built on just a handful of basic mechanisms you can mix endlessly). And tunnel and accordion hybrids combine everything above into genuinely wild objects.
None of these require special equipment. What they reward is a little patience, a good bone folder, an accurate ruler, and a craft knife you keep sharp. The skills stack, every one of these is just the accordion and a few cuts, wearing a more elaborate costume.
A Few Things That Make Level 2 Go Smoothly
The jump in complexity mostly comes down to precision, so a handful of habits pay off enormously. Cut a paper prototype first, always. These structures are three-dimensional, and it’s much easier to understand a flag book by holding a scrappy practice one than by squinting at instructions. Mind your paper grain on anything that folds. Score before you fold on heavier paper (a bone folder run along a ruler gives you a crisp, controlled crease instead of a raggedy guess). Let glue dry fully under a weight — a couple of heavy books on top prevents the warping that happens when damp paper dries unevenly. And choose paper with a little backbone: too floppy and your sculpture flops; too stiff and it cracks at the folds. Text-weight and light cardstock are usually the sweet spot.
Mostly, though: play. This is the part of bookmaking where the rules loosen and the experiments get rewarded.
Come Build Something Three-Dimensional With Us
We keep bookbinding papers, chipboard, bone folders, quality knives, and adhesives that actually hold, plus the good decorative papers for covers that make the whole thing feel finished. And we love this stuff! If you want to puzzle out a tunnel book, figure out which paper will hold a crisp accordion pleat, or just stand in the aisle debating star-book cover options, that’s a genuinely great afternoon as far as we’re concerned. Bring your idea. We’ll help you fold it into being.
Ready to make a book that doesn’t sit flat? Come visit us. We’ll help you pick the right paper for a crisp accordion pleat, puzzle out your first tunnel book, and find covers that make it all feel finished. Bring your idea and we’ll help you fold it into being. Want to share the finished product? Tag us on Instagram!
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