How to bind your own scrapbook or journal

A ready-made album never quite fits. The size is wrong, or the spine is too narrow for everything you want to stick in it. Binding it yourself solves that, and it's less difficult than it looks. A needle, some thread and a few pieces of board will get you a long way.

First, the question that decides everything: how thick will it get

An empty book and a full scrapbook are two different things. Photos, cards, little envelopes and embellishments (decorations such as buttons, stickers and little flowers) make every page thicker, but only at the front edge of the page. The spine stays just as thin. The result is a book that fans open and won't close any more.

That's why shop-bought albums have wide spines or loose strips between the pages. If you bind your own, you need to build in that room too. So think about it beforehand: will this be a journal you mostly write in, or an album that will fill up with photos and layers? The answer decides which binding you choose.

Rings: the easiest start

Binder rings are metal rings that click open. You punch two or three holes in each page and in the cover, and you're done. The big advantage is that you can always add, swap or remove pages. So the book simply grows along with what you stick in it.

A few things to watch out for:

• Choose generous rings: a scrapbook gets thicker than you think.
• Punch every page in exactly the same place. Make one template out of card and lay it on the page each time.
• For the cover, greyboard of about 2 mm works best. Thinner board starts to wobble on the rings.
• Stick a bit of reinforcement around the holes of thin pages, or they'll tear out after a while.

Rings are also the answer if you don't have a machine and it still needs to be done quickly, for a present, for example.

Folding signatures

A signature is a small stack of folded sheets slotted inside each other, like an exercise book without a cover. Take four or five sheets, fold them in half and nest them inside each other. More sheets per signature makes the fold bulge, and the inner pages then stick out at the front edge.

Fold with a bone folder, a flat piece of bone or plastic you use to crease the fold sharply. Pay attention to the grain of the paper: in most sheets the fibres run in one direction, and along that direction paper folds crisply without cracking. Gently bend a sheet both ways; where it resists least, that's the way the grain runs. For a scrapbook, choose paper that folds well and doesn't crack along the fold line. Watercolour paper and sturdy drawing paper often work well.

Ordinary 80 gsm printer paper is too thin for photos. For pages you stick things on, 120 to 200 gsm is fine, and for heavy layouts it can be a bit sturdier still.

Sewing a single signature

The simplest sewn binding is a single signature with three or five holes in the fold. Pierce the holes first with an awl, with the signature open inside a folded piece of card so the holes land exactly on the fold line. Use a template, so everything lines up neatly.

Here's how to sew with three holes:

1. Start on the inside at the middle hole and go out.
2. On the outside, go to the top hole and push back in.
3. On the inside, go past the middle hole to the bottom hole and push out.
4. Come back in through the middle hole from the outside.
5. Tie a knot around the long thread running over the middle hole and trim.

Always pull the thread tight along the fold, not across it, or the paper will tear. For a mini album or a travel journal, this is often enough.

Several signatures

If you want a thicker book, you sew several signatures together. With a Coptic binding, the stitching stays visible on the spine and the book opens completely flat. That's handy to work in, although some scrapbookers find it less suited to an album with lots of photos, because the spine has little give. A simple version is to fold an A4 sheet in half to make four pages, make signatures from those and sew five or six together. That way you'll have your first little book in about an hour.

You attach each signature to the previous one with a small loop around the thread below it, known as the kettle stitch.

Japanese binding

With a Japanese binding, you don't sew through a fold but through a stack of loose pages, close to the spine edge. The thread wraps visibly around the spine and forms a pattern. There are simple versions with four holes and more decorative patterns for formal albums.

Here's how to go about it:

• Line up the pages and the cover exactly and hold them in place with clips.
• Draw a line about 1 to 1.5 cm from the spine edge and space the holes along it.
• Pierce the holes with an awl or drill, a few pages at a time.
• Before you start, fold each page back along a line just beside the holes. That makes the page turn more easily.

The downside: this binding isn't really made for thick contents. The spine is as thick as the stack of paper. If you're sticking photos in, you'll need to add spacer strips.

Making room in the spine

A spacer strip is a narrow piece of paper or card that you bind in between the pages at the spine. It makes the spine thicker, so there's room later for what you stick on the pages. A common method: for each page, cut a strip as tall as the page and a few centimetres wide, fold it in half and bind it in. That gives you two extra layers per page at the spine.

It works the same way with sewn signatures. You can lay a narrow strip inside each fold, or use fewer pages per signature so there are more signatures in the spine. With rings, you solve it simply by using bigger rings.

A handy rule of thumb: look at what you'll be sticking on each page. A photo on sturdy paper needs little extra room; an envelope full of cards or a layer of embellishments needs a lot more.

Which thread, which needle and which glue

Thread needs to be strong and not fray. Waxed linen thread is the classic choice: it glides well, holds a knot and lasts a long time. Fine perle cotton, like crochet thread, is a lovely alternative for a Japanese binding, especially if you want to show off a colour. Ordinary sewing thread is usually too thin; a Coptic binding ends up too loose with it. Then again, thread that's too thick looks clumsy in a small book.

Use a bookbinding needle: it's blunt, so it doesn't tear the paper further. Always pierce the holes first with an awl and let the needle just follow with the thread.

For the cover, use bookbinding glue or white wood glue (PVA). If it's very thick, thin it with a little water and spread it in a thin layer with a flat brush, from the middle out to the edges. Thick blobs soak through thin paper and cause wrinkles. For sticking paper onto the pages, double-sided tape is often less fussy than wet glue. If you'd like to know more about glue for photos and paper, there's a separate article on that.

A sturdy cover

For a hard cover, cut two boards of greyboard about 2 mm thick, slightly larger than your pages, and a narrow spine board. Lay them on the covering material with a small gap between them, so the cover can hinge. A strip of card as a spacer helps keep that gap even all the way along.

Bookcloth is lovely to work with. It has a paper backing, so the glue doesn't seep through the fabric. Sturdy paper, faux leather and cork work too. Leave 1.5 to 2 cm all round to fold over to the inside. Cut the corners off at an angle, but leave about the thickness of the board at each corner; that way the point stays covered.

With thin paper or fabric, it's better to spread the glue on the board than on the material itself. Smooth the covering material out from the middle and fold the edges over. Finally, stick an endpaper over it, a sheet on the inside that covers the folded-over edges. Leave the cover to dry under a few heavy books, with a sheet of baking paper in between.

A soft cover is fine too. A piece of sturdy drawing paper or thin card, with a spine folded to the width you need, is enough for a journal.

Binding machines such as the Cinch and the Bind-it-All

Lots of scrapbookers buy a small binding machine after a while. Well-known brands are the Cinch and the Bind-it-All. They punch a row of small holes along the edge and then press wire rings closed, like the ones you know from a bound report. How thick the board can be depends on the model; check what the manufacturer says. You choose the wire size to match the thickness of the book.

The advantage is speed: a mini album or planner is bound in a few minutes and opens flat. The downside is that you can't add pages afterwards without bending the wire open, and it's still a purchase. So feel free to start with rings or needle and thread, and see later whether you really miss having a machine. If you don't have one, a print shop can often do wire binding for you.

Start small

Make your first book small and from cheap paper. A single-signature booklet with a soft cover will teach you more than any explanation.