One made for Miles and one for his friend Eleanor whose birthday we just celebrated, these touch books were fun and fairly simple to put together.
I scrounged through our craft room and basement for interesting textures, and came up with: window screen, pink bubble wrap (cut from leftover Glossier packaging), embroidered gift wrap, felt, sherpa fabric, reversible sequins (left over from this project), sandpaper, and clear plastic (used in the quiet book and this project, too). It's really a good way to use up scraps -- and to use up a lot of hot glue.
I bought the white cardstock and the binder rings [affiliate links], then set to work. More tools that might be helpful (and more affiliate links): X-acto knife, ruler, hot glue gun, hole punch.
Start with determining how many pages you'll have, including cover and back. Cut that many 6"x6" squares of your cardstock. (I had 8 textures, so cut out 10 squares.) In all but two (saving those for the cover and back), measure and cut a 4"x4" square from the middle.
Punch two holes in one side of every square, trying to make sure they all more or less line up with each other.
Cut out your textures large enough so that they fill the 4" window you cut, but small enough that they don't overlap the edges of the cardstock or the punched holes. Hot glue in place.
Some, like the bubble wrap, screen, and plastic, were see-through, so I strategically paired two of them with the book's cover and back page, and used a 4" square that had been cut out as backing so that the bubble wrap page would have a solid background.
Hot glue the cover and a texture page back-to-back, and do the same for the back cover.
Hot glue two texture pages back-to-back to make the internal pages, being sure to keep your punched holes lined up.
"Bind" the pages with the rings, and write a title on the front in Sharpie.
Scroll to see all the pages, and a video of Miles's book in action.
