Illuminated Tunnel Book

I just wanted to show some instructions for how to make a tunnel book. I couldn't really find any good instructions for how to use images found online so I decided to make my own after creating this tunnel book.

I first started by deciding what theme I wanted for my book. Since I wanted to make the book for my wife on our anniversary, I wanted a couples theme.

I also wanted some bamboo in the foreground and the great wall of China in the background. I began by searching for images of these, especially black and white silhouettes.

If some of the images will take up a lot of ink to print, you can enlarge them and trace them lightly with a pencil on your computer screen.

After this, you can make a scanned copy of your image if you need to save it or print multiple copies.

You also need to make sure that each picture fills about the same amount of the page (I used half a page). You may need to scale the pictures to fit correctly. You can use some type of free photo editor.

Now you should print out the designs you did not trace (preferably black and white silhouettes for minimal ink use. You don't want large dark areas, only the outlines of the image). You can either print them or trace them again onto white card stock (for the rigidity). I tried to keep the paper mostly blank, other than some light pencil marks.

After this, cut out all of the shapes you want removed and keep the ones you want to show up each layer. You can use a hobby knife (Xacto) to cut out the difficult or small pieces. Make sure you are cutting on a surface you wont worry about damaging, like cardboard.

I designed my book to have concentric circles of decreasing size in addition to the images, so I used a drafting compass to make the circles, each smaller then the previous. Be sure to leave some paper at the top and bottom of the pages so that it can be connected across to give it more strength.

Next, you have to make the bindings of the book. Do this by folding paper back and forth on itself in even sections (about one inch folds). Then cut tabs to glue/tape the pages to so they wont bend to the angles of the side bindings. I used clear tape wrapped in on itself to hold the pages together.

I added an LED and soldered batteries from an old piece of electronics for a nice personal touch, it looks amazing in the dark!

That's it! Let me know if you have any questions.