Maze Book Class...

Please feel free to use these instructions to make your own maze books. You are free to link to this page from any forum etc if you wish. Please do NOT copy this information and/or photos to use for your own classes/forums/webpages without permission. Please also note that I'm not claiming that I have invented the maze book, but these simple step-by-step instructions and photos are mine.

Class Supply list:

1 sheet of 12x12 cardstock
1 sheet of 12x12 paper (we won’t use all)
Chipboard
1 metre of ribbon (1 yard)

Also needed:
Scissors
Wet glue of your choice (I used a glue stick)
Bonefolder (not necessary)

Please also note that I'm not claiming that I have invented the maze book, but these simple step-by-step instructions and photos are mine (and have taken me a l-o-n-g time to do LOL!).

Before we start, can I please say: do NOT be put off by the length of these instructions. The maze book is actually surprisingly quick to make (promise you!), but because I’m trying to make these instructions super easy to follow with lots and lots of step-by-step photos, it does look like it takes hours and hours to make. And it simply doesn’t. So please join me and give it a go.

These instructions have NOT been tested on animals, however they have been tested on my dear boyfriend (thank you very much!), with no scrapping experience, to see that they were possible to follow for a total beginner. :)

Right. Let’s first talk supplies. I have used a piece of pink cardstock and a sheet of patterned paper by Luxe Designs called “Nail Polish” (from the “Pashmina” collection). I have also used the “Swirls” ribbon from the same collection. You can of course use anything you like, but it’s nice if the ribbon, cardstock and patterned paper matches.

As for the chipboard you can cheat a bit. I’m not using any official, thick, bought chipboard. The back of a notepad will do just fine. You need two square pieces measuring 8,5x8,x5 centimetres (roughly 3 1/4x3 ¼ inches).

A bonefolder is optional but very useful. You need to make your folds as neat and sharp as you can so it’s good to go over your folds with the bonefolder. Alternatively you can use the side of a ruler or similar to drag along your fold. We have the supplies gathered and we’re ready to start.

Put your chipboard, ribbon and patterned paper to one side. All we need right now is the sheet of cardstock and a bonefolder. Fold the paper in half. For every fold, please take care and line it up carefully and make your fold sharp by going over it with the bonefolder.

Turn the piece so you have the folded edge facing AWAY from you. Grab the top edge NEAREST to yourself (just the top sheet) and fold that up to the fold which you just made. (The small inserted photo below shows you how your piece will look from the side)

Now flip your piece over (from side to side) and grab the bottom edge and fold that towards the top fold. See photo. It’s really simple to do (but hard to explain in words).

Unfold and you should have this:

Now we will repeat the same thing as we just have done but in the other direction. First turn your (folded out) piece of cardstock so you have the folds that you just made going vertically (top to bottom the way you’re looking at it). Fold in half (take the bottom edge up to the top edge).

You remember how to do this now, right? Turn so you have the folded edge facing away from you. Take the top part (only!) of the bottom edge and fold towards the fold you just made in the last step. (Again you can see a small inserted picture below on how your sheet should now look from the side).

Flip the piece over (from side to side). Grab the bottom edge and again bring up to the top fold. We now have this:

Now the hard part is done. If you could follow my pictures that shouldn’t even have been very hard to do. Fold out your piece and you should have a 12x12 sheet of cardstock with fold marks of 16 equal squares.

Get your scissors out. Be careful and make sure you get this right: Looking from the top you want to cut down the first fold past THREE squares. Then from the bottom you cut up the second fold past THREE squares. And then finally you cut from the top of the third fold past THREE squares. Look at the picture below where I have put the green lines. (The green lines on my photo are thick just to show you where you cut. You should NOT cut out 1 cm big sections here or anything. Just cut as you would normally cut down a line).

You should end up with something like this: (the green arrows shows where the cuts stop)

Now we need to fold it together. This is really simple. Just follow the folds and keep flipping with them:

Flip over:


(Please disregard my bonefolder in the following photos – it’s only to hold my book down so I can get decent photos) Now take your folded pile of pages and fold under:

Flip over:

Fold under:

Keep folding as you go along and then fold under as you get to the turn:

Flip over:

Fold under and keep folding the rest until you get to the end. You should now have this set of neatly folded pages:


Put your inside pages to one side. Take out your chipboard pieces that are cut to size (refer to the beginning if you haven’t already cut yours), your ribbon and your patterned paper. Cut two squares of patterned paper measuring 11x11 centimetres (about 4 ¼ x 4 ¼ inches).

Put your patterned paper pieces with the BACKSIDE up. Glue the chipboard squares in the middle of each patterned paper piece. (I’m just showing one in the photo below)

Fold the edges of the patterned paper in over the chipboard and then unfold again. This will give you crease marks in the corners of the patterned paper.

Take your scissors and snip off the corners. You want to cut just inside of the folds, slightly diagonally (see photo) towards the chipboard corners. Make sure you don’t cut exactly up to the chipboard corner. Stop the cut just the tiniest bit (a millimetre or two) before the corner. See close-up photo:

After you have cut all four corners your piece should look like this:

Put glue on all four edges and fold them in neatly towards the back of the chipboard. The result should be this (showing one piece from the front and one from the back):

Put both pieces of chipboard backside up on your table. You want to have about 1 centimetre or just a bit more (about ½ an inch) between your pieces. Make sure they are lined up perfectly. Take your ribbon and work out where the middle is. Glue this is place as the photo shows below (ie a strip of glue from side to side across the middle of each chipboard piece). If you are using a ribbon with a pattern on one side only, make sure you put it pattern DOWN.

Bring in your folded pages. Put glue on the top piece ONLY (like the side you see my bonefolder on in the photo below).

Attach this to the LEFT piece of your chipboard. Making sure that you have the fold + all your remaining cardstock pages going off to the right (see pic). Use your bonefolder to press this into the chipboard while the glue is drying. Making sure you press around where the ribbon is underneath.

Flip all your cardstock pages (still neatly folded) over onto the left chipboard piece (where the bottom page is now attached). Now add glue to the top of this end piece (the piece which you, again, can see my bonefolder on).

Place the page with the glue against the right chipboard piece. Press in place. Your book is ready and it should look like this open:

Close your book. Tie the ribbon in a bow and cut off any unnecessary ribbon. The reason I tell you to do this now is that different width of ribbon might need different lengths to make a decent bow. So it’s worth cutting it after you have made your book and see how much “ribbon waste” you have. This should be the result:

I hope you’ll have lots of fun adding photos and decorating your new maze book. To give you some guideline regarding photos I have found that if you print 4 photos onto a standard size photopaper (15x10 cm/6x4 inches) they turn out pretty good for this maze book. You only need to cut a tiny bit off the longest end. You have a total of 16 pages (counting inside front and back cover). So I printed 3 sheets of photos (=12 photos in total) and had four pages for journaling only in my book. Also if you print your photos this way, they don’t take up the complete page in your maze book (photo being rectangular and pages being square) so you have space for a little journaling under/over or to the side of your photo.


I hope you enjoyed my class! Wishing you lots of fun creating your own version!