The Fairy Tree Book.

Book binding with beading.

A few months ago I went on schoolcamp for 3 days, and I looked after "my" special needs child, who, because of her wheelchair, was not able to do everything the other children could do.
We had our own adventures, and 1 of them was finding a hollow tree, which she proceeded to make into a Fairy Party Tree. It involved (quite magically) a native wood-pigeon dropping a wing feather just about in her lap, straight after she put up the "Welcome" invitation to the River fairies.
The afternoon storm that came later, -with wind, rain and lightning, which blew everything away, - all added up to a great story to be written in the weeks that followed at school.
I had made plenty of photos, and so I set about making an actual real book for her for Christmas, using her words ( she has great language skills at the age of 7 1/2) and my photos.

Holding the 2 covers together with sturdy fabric.

I used the cover of a vintage Readers' Digest book, cutting the spine away, measuring how thick the new book would be. Then glueing  a sturdy strip of fabric to replace the spine, with pretty braiding to hide the edges. On the inside I glued a large piece of fabric right across the 2 book covers with space in between to account for the spine. 

I then stitched the folded "signatures" in. 3 signatures of 3 to 4 pieces of folded paper each.

While stitching the middle signature I added bright sparkly beads on the outside of the spine.

Rooming in the Party Tree.

Here she is carefully placing the things we found at camp, bright coloured leaves and flowers, berries, acorn cups, even a birds' nest, inside the tree hollow.

It occupied her for a good hour, and a little friend helped her as well.

Part of the story she wrote.

The hardest and most complicated part of the book was working out how to print the story and leave pages for the photos, so that it followed in order. But I worked it out in the end. 

I read it aloud in front of the class, and she was thrilled. So were her parents!

Very satisfying!