Stinkerpants

How to: Make a Sammich, Part 2

July 13, 2009 in Blog • Tutorials & Tips • How To

Are you patiently waiting for the second part of the sandwich board table tents tutorial?  Well, here it is!  And here is a handy link to Part One.
Last we left off, you’d finished all your cuts.  Good job!  You rock.  Now, let’s get organized.
You should have:

1. Two pieces of book board measuring 9.5″ x 6.5″
2. Two pieces of “big” text paper measuring 8″ x 11″
3. Two pieces of “small” text paper measuring 6″ x 9″
4. One piece of scrap text paper measuring 4″ x 9″ (just throw this off to the side for later)
5. 13 or so strips of book cloth measuring 15″ x 2″

Here’s a visual guide.  The numbers above serve as kind of a legend.

Step 1: Gluing the first piece

You’re going to do steps 1 and 2 twice, for each piece of book board.  Get excited!

Step 1A: Stick it down

Get your PVA glue, one piece of bookboard and one piece of “big” text paper ready.  You also should cover your work surface with some kind of paper (be careful using newspaper, though!  You don’t want the ink to transfer to your paper and ruin your board!).

Using a brush, brush some PVA onto your bookboard piece.  Cover the entire thing.  Don’t put it on too thick, or too thin.  It should be thick enough to look white, but not so thick that it drips.  Now carefully and slowly center it, face down, in the middle of your big text paper piece.

Flip it over and use your fingers to carefully smooth out as many of the bubbles as you can.  Make sure you don’t have any glue on your fingers first!

Step 1B: A bit more glue…

Flip the whole thing over again, and use your brush to put PVA on the edges of the text paper.  The best way to do this is to start at the edge of the bookboard and brush out.  If you have a piece of paper down (and you should!), you can brush the glue from the text paper and onto your work area so every bit of paper is coated.

Step 1C: Finishing it

Now that all your edges are glued, start folding them in, one at a time.  The edges on the left and right are smaller than the ones at the top and bottom, so start with them.  Smooth out the bubbles as you fold each side.  You should end up with something that looks like the drawing below.  The paper should be tight around the bookboard, so it’s pretty much the same size as the book board was when you started with it.

Step 2: Covering the rest of the bookboard

Go get your “small” piece of text paper (#3). Cover one side in glue and then (slowly and carefully) center it over the exposed book board, like so:

Now, with glue-free fingers, smooth out the bubbles.

Step 3: Repeat.

Repeat steps 1 and 2 with your remaining pieces of book board, “big” text paper, and “small” text paper.

Now you have two.  Yay!

Step 4: Stick ‘em Together.

Go get one of your pieces of book cloth, and lay them out like this:

You’re going to glue them into this position.  Don’t put the pieces of book board right up against one another, or it won’t bend at all and you won’t be able to stand it up. I’ve found that 1/4″ between the two works pretty well, but use your judgment.

Coat the book cloth piece in PVA on the un-pretty side, and lay your pieces in place.  Then fold the book cloth sides into the middle.  Flip it over and push out any bubbles.  In the 1.4″ gap between the two pieces of bookboard, use your fingernail or the edge of a spoon to make a nice crease–the book cloth should get stuck to the other side, so it’s very thin. Try to make it pretty.  :)

Step 5: Standing them up, Part 1 .

Keep in mind that your setup isn’t dry yet, so it’s fragile.  Try not to move it too much.

Don’t try it right now, but trust me: if you were to try to stand your sandwich board up when it’s dry, it wouldn’t stay standing.  It would slide apart and flatten itself on the table.  Not cool.  As a result, we need to keep the bottoms of the boards together, so they don’t slide.  That’s what the ribbon’s for.

You can see the ribbon at the base of each sandwich board, in this photo:

This is where that little scrap piece (#4 from above) comes in.  Cut out two pieces measuring around 2″ x 2″.  This doesn’t have to be perfect.  Also, grab your piece of ribbon.

Glue one side of your ribbon at the bottom of one of the bookboard pieces, in the center (as pictured below).  You’ll want to use about 1/2″ of the ribbon for this part, and not too much more.  Aside from the 1/2″ you’ve glued to the bookboard, you should have about 6.5″ of ribbon hanging off the bottom.  You’ll use that later–for now, just let it hang.

Then, cover one side of the 2″ scrap piece with glue, and glue over the top of the ribbon. This will hide the top of the ribbon and add more support.  Push out any air bubbles.

Step 6: Let it Dry.

Let it dry.  Do not skip this step, or you will be sad.  Or angry.  Or both.

My recommendation is to let this dry overnight.  You don’t want the whole thing falling apart!

If you’re making multiple sandwich boards, you can set this one aside and repeat steps 1-5 for all of them.  Tomorrow, you can move on to Step 7 for all of them.

Step 7: Standing them Up, Part 2

Why hello again!  I hope you had a wonderful sleep last night!  Your sandwich board should be all dry now, waiting for you.

Pick up your sandwich board and gently move it back and forth a little to stretch out any glue that might have hardened the book cloth.  Now, try to stand it up.  See how it falls down?  You need to finish attaching the ribbon to keep this from happening.  Can you imagine if you had no ribbon?!  The disasters, I tell you! ;)

Basically, you’re going to repeat Step 5 from yesterday, but it won’t be as easy because you can’t lay the sandwich board flat anymore.  This may require some finagling on your part. Also, it’s hard for me to draw what you have to do, so this is what I’ve got:

Basically, you have to work with the ribbon, glue and scrap piece of paper while the board is folded.

Then, put it on its side and let it dry.  Don’t try to stand it up, or the ribbon you just glued will fall off.  Don’t let it dry with both boards touching, or they may end up glued together.

And that’s it!  After it’s all dry, your beautiful sandwich board is ready to be personalized for your purposes.

This is my first real tutorial, so I’m not sure that I was 100% clear on every step.  If you have any questions, please let me know!  I will be happy to answer them in the comments!