Spiral Bound Journals

These books use various random kinds of paper for the interior pages. I like to call this kind of book "Recycled" because they aren't made from new, store-bought papers. I also recycled an old beat-up copy of Madeline for the covers. I think the whole used children's book thing is a little overdone in the bookbinding world, and there are people who do it much better than me, but the fact is, you can't find a better book cover than... a book cover!

 

 

 

Spiral binding isn't nearly as easy as I thought it would be. It takes a lot of time and elbow grease, but I think it's worth the effort.

♥ Jessica

Review: The Zutter Bind-It-All

I had resisted buying a spiral binding machine for a long time. I like sewing my books and spiral binding felt like cheating. Recently I decided to purchase one for two reasons. First, I have a lot of nice paper that is too small, or the wrong grain direction, for binding in the traditional way. Second, I know that spiral notebooks are better for things like photo albums and scrapbooks. 

I chose the Zutter binder because of it's price and good reviews I read around the net. I find it a bit difficult to operate, but I suspect I will get better with practice. I wasted a lot of paper trying to get the holes equally spaced, mostly because I didn't understand the directions the first time I read them. Once I figured it out, binding went a lot smoother. 

My one complaint is the cost of the spines. I'm always looking for ways to keep the final cost of my notebooks down, and since spiral binding takes much less time, I would have liked to charge less for the final product, but alas, the cost of the spines makes that impossible. Overall, I am glad I bought the Zutter and I am looking forward to all the books I can create with it. 

♥ Jessica