For years a “Concertina Book” looked like the one in this photo, made by Brenda Gottsabend. They were accordion folded pages placed between two covers. The Library of Congress has a nice online tutorial with a little historical information on the Concertina Book. There are a couple of great examples on this website too. (Did you notice something else with a new name?)

For today’s post I was looking for a site I remembered with Concertina Book instructions that I wanted to share with you. For many years it was the only tutorial of this type online. It also had a bit more about the history of these books. I couldn’t find that site but I found something else…. the Re-namers have struck again!

Somewhere back in the mid to late 80’s stampers and crafters discovered “Star Books”. Now, I’ll be honest with you and say that I don’t know if they had a different name before the stampers found them but for years if you said “Star Book” this is what everyone thought you were talking about:

The Star Book pages are simple explosion folds and you glue them all together, back to back. The instructions for the one shown are here. Several years ago the Carousel Book was discovered by the newer members of the stamping community and rechristened as the Star Book. AMRSC has one of the many online tutorials for this new style of Star Books.

While looking for the Concertina Book site I discovered that the original Star Books are now being called Concertina Books. This is enough to make my head spin and my hair hurt!

If you are still with me and you want to make a Star Book Concertina Book you can check out the tutorial at Dreaming Spiral. Then, if you aren’t too confused yet, hop on over to HGTV and see what they call a Concertina Book.