Make your own BJD manga!

For more pictures of the manga that I've made, you can see them on the BJD shelf tutorial I made, here: hanappi.deviantart.com/art/Pre…

As a part of my 'Prepping for BJD' photo series (Of tutorials and information).. I decided I'd post this one about making BJD manga. It's very simple and easy, and I most likely will post a tutorial of this with pictures later on, for visual learners. ^^ And you can mass produce them quicker than Italia can mass produce white flags! (Hetalia reference. xD)

What you'll need:
-thin cardboard (from a cereal box, popcorn box--anything like that.)
-Krazy glue (or a similar type super glue)
-A glue stick
-Scissors
-printer and paper
-Scotch tape (optional)

First... you'll be using your printer, some paper, and Google for this first step. Have a favorite manga? On Google Images, look up (I'll be using an example for this, you can do it with whatever one you want) "Ao no exorcist manga cover", and look for an image that has BOTH THE FRONT AND BACK IN THE SAME PICTURE FILE, if you want your mang to look more authentic. Save it onto your computer.
If you've got a program like Microsoft Paint, you can scale down the size of the picture to a size that would be more appropriate for the size of BJD you'll be making it for. When you finish doing that, you can print it (with or without several others). The next step after that would be to cut it out.

Now, after disassembling whatever box you'll be using (meaning, pull apart that Cap'n Crunch box so it's flat), put the rectangular manga shape down on the box and trace it with a pencil (be careful not to get pencil lines on the manga paper itself; you can always cut the cardboard a little bigger, which is what I do. It's easy to fix later.) Cut out the shape that you've just drawn onto your box. 

Next, you'll be pasting the manga paper onto the cardboard. What I like to do is scrub the glue stick on the back of the manga paper, then stick it onto the cardboard; it's not the permanent way to keep it on there, but it'll keep it there until you glue it down with krazy glue later. Don't worry if some of the corners lift up, just put more of the gluestick down to hold it still.
**Also, if you did happen to make the cardboard too big for the manga cover or have some awkward edges, this is the step where you'll cut those off and kind of even everything out. ^^

Our next step would be using your finger to bend the cardboard and create the shape of an empty book. You'll want it so there is a flat spine the way that you see on real books, so put the cardboard (with the manga attached) vertically next to your finger. On one side of where the spine ends, bend it over your finger gently, so the cardboard is now in a sort of funky L shape. You do that to the other side until your hollow manga is in the shape of a book--just with no pages. It sort of looks like a U at this point.

Now, you'll apply crazy glue to the corners of the manga paper, lifting them up and dabbing a small amount of Krazy glue onto the cardboard before pressing the paper back down. Do this to all the corners. Do not add too much excessive glue, because the weight of it will seep through the manga cover and make it look stained, as well as bend the corners of the cardboard up to where the whole thing has this sort of convex, bent shape that you don't really want to fight with. *If this does happen, try to gently bend it out of this shape.

After this, using a small piece of long excess cardboard, you will make sure that this is a small yet lengthy piece of extra cardboard that you can fold up that will fit inside the manga yet stay hidden. (You can subsitute this with small, thin foam pieces too) You'll want to fold it up and, well, I kinda do like to tape it together so it doesn't pop open. After this step, you spread Krazy glue all over the surface of one side of this small piece of folded up, thick cardboard (that also fits the width of the spine of your manga) and attach it to one of the inside covers of the cardboard manga. Press and hold it there. Do the same to the other side, and hold it all together until you feel confident that the krazy glue won't pop open. (Which, in my experience, this is only a max of 30 seconds.) 

Voila, you have your own BJD-scale manga! Now, I must add that this is for display only. You can't open it up and stuff after you've krazy glued it shut. If you want one that you can use for your BJD to read or something, you can actually just skip that last step (the one about filling the inside of the manga) and use it like that. 

Have fun with your BJD and their new manga!!