Pink rabbit noses and roses abound in this tunnel book–but be careful, not all bunnies you meet are sugary sweet

 

 

 

 

I am not sure why I had never made one before, but I am here to tell you that making tunnel books are a whole bundle of fun.

The biggest challenge to making a tunnel book is figuring out how to add items so that they can be seen through all the layers, making sure you do not block other elements and keeping in mind both what you will see when you look from the front of the book to the back and when you  look from the back to the front.

At first glance, the book appears sugary sweet–until you begin reading some of the quotes about bunnies. Intermingled with quotes from Winnie the Pooh and other sweet tales are some rather twisted views of Mr. Cottontail.

To make the book, I used the door opening of the Album with Arched Door as a template for the rest of the tunnel book openings by creating arched holes in the subsequent chipboard pages that decreased in size by 1/2 inch.

The album is 6-1/2″ wide x 9″ tall. In the second page of the chipboard, I cut a hole that was 1/2 inch smaller from each of the original arch edges. Then, on the third page of the chipboard book, I cut a hole that was another 1/2 inch smaller. When the pieces are stacked on top of each other, it creates a tunnel effect.

Next I made a binding for the book.A little unsure of the best way to do this, I turned to the helpful Tunnel Book Tutorial by Alpha Stamps’ designer Laura Carson.

Basically, I cut cardstock strips the length of the chipboard and then scored two fold lines in each piece of cardstock to create a U shape. I attached the pages of the album to the folded cardstock with Beacon Fabri-Tac. The gap formed by the folds creates space between the chipboard pages to accommodate the three-dimensional elements.

To be honest, I had already adhered decorative paper such as the Frolic Friendship Scrapbook Paper, Frolic Petits Moments Scrapbook Paper, Adore Always Roses Scrapbook Paper and Blush Charmed Scrapbook Paper to each of the pages, when I remembered that I should have added the binding first. Luckily, I was able to pull up edges and slide the binding into place. A few bumps initially appear, but I was eventually able to smooth them out.

I painted the doorway and the chipboard elements such as the balcony balustrade, leafy corners, and vine frame with coordinating colors of acrylic paint. .

While that dried, I fussy cut a seemingly endless supply of roses and rabbits

I made the doorway hinges by cutting and inking diamond shapes from one of the scrapbook papers.

To finish the book, I sought out quotations about bunnies and gardens and printed them onto clear label sheets.I then added curly paper roses, old-fashioned roses, mulberry blossoms, a terracotta wall planter, a miniature carrot, twiggy leaf garland and loads of collage sheet bunnies, butterflies, dragonflies and what not.

If you want to make your own bunny tunnel book–whether they be homicidal bunnies or sweet fluffy bunnies–you can see my supply list here.