I have a few of these fab retro pictures of facebook, twitter, Skype & You Tube printed onto card. I have used the smaller ones on cards but the larger size is far too big for regular-size cards. The care they are printed on is quite flimsy so I backed them with another sheet of card & cut out a matching size from stardream card for the back cover. I had some small lined notebooks which fitted perfectly. I made one up earlier with a 6 spiral binding which didn’t sit right so I started again with 8 spirals, & that looked better. Since the cards weren’t a standard size, it took a while to work out how to punch 8 holes with the Bind-It-All so I made a template from scrap card so I don’t have to work it out again.

A while back I bought some basic black frames for some mixed media pictures I was planning to do (see Gallery / Mixed-media). They came with a sheet of perspex to protect the mounted picture. As the pictures weren’t going to be completely flat I had no need for the bit of perspex. Of course I couldn’t throw it away as “it might come in useful for something someday”.

I thought it would be cool to have a notebook with a completely transparent front cover & was pleased to see that the Bind-it-All punched neatly through it. It looked good but a bit plain so I arranged buttons on it & marked the places of the holes, then drilled  through the marks. I then tied each button on with waxed cotton thread.

As I have missed a week of this challenge I decided to do a double book this week.

Dos-à-dos binding (from the French meaning “back-to-back”) is a binding structure in which two separate books are bound together such that the fore edge of one is adjacent to the spine of the other, with a shared lower board between them serving as the back cover of both.

I like the idea of a book with lined pages of one side & plain pages on the other. Since I had a stash of  both plain & lined A5 paper to hand I decided to bind them  in a dos-a-dos fashion with a spiral binding. I made the covers slightly wider than I would have done for a single book so that the spirals on both sides wouldn’t interfere with the pages.

During another charity shop rummage I found a set of Wallace & Gromit playing cards. They were slightly bigger than average playing cards & had nice jolly pictures on them – perfect notebook material. I had some cheap mini notepads which were gum-bound along the top edge, which matched the cards in size perfectly. This was a bonus as I hate lots of tricky measuring. While the notepads were still intact I rounded the corners of the notepads to match the round corners of the playing cards, with my new toy – the Paper Gator. This is a powerful piece of kit which can cut through multiple sheets of paper, card, chipboard etc like a hot knife through butter. Snapped up from another charity shop for a bargain price. I then punched holes for the binding spirals & cut a new back cover from stardream card. I then separated the sheets & re-bound them with the Bind-it-all.

Another busy week at work, so here is another ‘one 1 made earlier’.During an afternoon browsing charity shops for other people’s ‘junk’ that can be used to make books or, my other passion, junk jewellery I came across a small tin which contained a card game for young children. I had never heard of the game, but I could immediately see the potential in the brightly coloured cards with pictures of crazy-looking creatures. I had some plain notebooks picked up on a previous shopping trip. The cards themselves were just a bit too small for covers so I mounted them on some stardream card. I separated the paper sheets & used the Bind-It-All to punch holes in them for the binding & voila! – a set of jolly notebooks.

When making cards I like to make sure embellishments are well-attached. I often sew them on or use staples, which can themselves become embellishments. How frustrating it is when a staple would make the perfect embellishment, but the perfect place to put it is just too far into the card for the stapler to reach. I have had a long-reach stapler on my wish-list for some time now. Imagine my joy, when browsing the charity shops to find, lurking at the back of a shelf, a long-reach stapler for the princely sum of £2.

I roughly tore some A4 sheets into quarters & folded each piece in half &  used 12 folded sheets to make a signature. I had a block of patterned card that I have had since I first started card-making many moons ago. Although I liked the colours & patterns, it never seemed to ‘go’ with any project I made. Never throw paper away. It will always be useful for something someday.The size of the sheets was perfect to make covers for my signatures. The addition of 3 staples from the aforementioned long-reach stapler transformed them into nice, simple to make, wee books.

I was inspired to make this book after seeing a video link on Pinterest to a You Tube video by Paperkawaii on how to make a mini modular origami notebook. In the video she used 6″ square paper sheets to make a really tiny book. I used A4 sheets. I will be trying this with other sizes to see how the books come out.

Unfortunately I have had a really busy week at work (my real job) so a slight cheat this week with a ‘here’s one I made earlier’.

See post from 21st April t014 – Mint sauce – Coptic Bound

Spine detail

Pamphlet stitch was the first true bookbinding stitch I learned. It is a simple 3-hole stitch. In pads of scrapbook paper / card there are always a few patterns that, although very nice, never seem to fit into any project. These were perfect for these notebooks as they didn’t have to match with anything else.

16 x 16 pin square Lego baseplates make perfect sized notebooks. The only problem being that at 5″ square they make for some awkward paper trimming. That was until I found 10″ square artists drawing pads. These are easily cut in half to make signatures, or quarters for spiral bound notebooks.

For this book I folded 6 signatures & used Coptic stitch to bind them to the Lego covers. Although the finished book looks great from the outside, I am not entirely happy with it. I wanted the decorative Coptic stitch to stand out so I used 1mm  thick red waxed cotton thread. It does make the stitching stand out but it was a bit thick to go through the holes in the paper easily & the knots were very bulky. (Note to self : I really must learn how to tie a ‘weavers knot’). Also I slightly underestimated the amount of thread so I ran out at the start of the last signature & had to join a new thread with a bulky knot. Never mind, I can always unpick it & start again. Practice makes perfect.