Wednesday 17 December 2014

Mini Monday - Binding With Metal Fasteners




It’s time for another Mini Monday and today I am going to show you some tips for binding your Mini album with a metal prong fastener side binding.





Prong fasteners are inexpensive and available from all stationary stores.

First decide on the size you want your base pages to be. Add ½” to both the height and width to determine the size of your front cover will be.  My base pages measure 5 ½ x 5 ½, so my front cover will measure 6 x 6.

Cut a piece of chipboard to 6 x 6. Next you need to cut a 1” strip from the 6 x 6 piece of chipboard so that you now have 1 piece measuring 5” x 6” and 1 ’side’ piece measuring 1” x 6”.

Detailed instructions on wrapping covers can be found ****Nov 10th blog post***.

For this side bound album place your chipboard as pictured below leaving a 1/16” space between your 2 pieces of chipboard. This will allow your cover to bend and the large portion to open. 





After covering the inside of your cover using cardstock gently run your bone folder along the gap between the 2 chipboard pieces to form a crease.






Next you will need to score all of your base pages 1” from the LEFT hand side. (In the photo below I have flipped the base page face down during scoring)




To allow more space between base pages for embellishing I suggest you insert chipboard spacer strips.

Cut 1 spacer strip from chipboard for each base page in your album. (For extra space you can double the number of spacer strips you use).

The size of your spacer strip is determined by the size of the side strip you used in the front cover, subtract ¼” from the width measurement. For example my spacers measure ¾” x 6.





Next we need to punch holes for our metal fastener. Place the top piece of the fastener on the 1” ‘side’ strip, centering it top to bottom and trace the holes using a pencil.





Punch the holes using your pencil marks as you guide.




You will now use your cover as a template, line up each base page, spacer strip and back cover, trace the holes, and punch.





Cut a piece of cardstock or coordinating patterned paper  5 ¾” x 3” to use to cover the outside spine of your mini. Using your template punch holes on both the left hand and right hand side of this piece as pictured below.





Grab your metal fastener and insert it into the holes you punched in your back cover.




Next place the piece you cut to cover your outside spine onto the fastener as pictured below. (Note that you are inserting the holes on the RIGHT side of this piece)






Continue adding pages to your fastener, alternating one page, one spacer strip as pictured below.









When all of your pages are attached it is time to wrap the 

outside cover binding strip back over your prongs as pictured below.




Finish by placing your front cover on the prongs and closing your fastener as pictured.





























1 comment:

  1. Please tell me on how to contact whoever has all the tutorials from kits I have purchased at the scrapbooking carnival. It gave me a web site but it is no more, so I cannot make them.

    ReplyDelete