Ten Two Studios

I’ve been playing with some of the manila surfaces this week, and came up with two easy way to turn the tabbed book pages into books. No binding skills are required—just some paper and a glue stick!

This first method is designed to produce a flat finished book. If you’re thinking of making something with minimal dimensional embellishments, this might be the book for you. To make one, you’ll need:

• From Ten Two Studios, tabbed manila book pages in whichever size you prefer. My sample is made with the 5×8 pages.

• A sheet of ivory or manila colored paper.
• A glue stick, or the paper glue of your choice.
• A ruler or straight edge for tearing.

Start by tearing four strips of paper, roughly 1-1/2″ wide, and longer than the height of your book pages. Tear one extra strip that’s 2″ wide, and set it aside for the last step.

Arrange your tabbed pages in the order you’d like them to appear, and place the stack on your work table. Flip open the first page and lay it to the left of the stack, as if the book is open to the first page. Line up the spine and bottom edges.

Apply glue to one of the paper strips, and lay it over the spine edges of the pages, centering it.

Fold the second page over the first, lining up the top and bottom edges, and making a fold in that piece of paper you just applied.

Line up the newly attached first and second pages on the left with the stack containing the third page on the right. Apply a glue strip over the spine edges, centering. Turn the page and fold the spine strip. Keep repeating this until all the pages are joined at the spine edges.

Trim away any excess papers from the top and bottom edges of your book.

Apply glue to the 2″ strip of paper, and lay the spine edge of your book on it, with the edge in the center of the strip.

Wrap the strip around the spine of the book to the front, and press it in place on the front page.

Trim away any excess paper at the top and bottom of the spine. Your book is ready to decorate!

The second method is designed to produce a book that will expand a little at the spine, to accept some chunky embellishments. If you choose this method, you’ll want to put all the pages together, decorate the interior, and leave the finished spine and covers for last.

To make one, you’ll need:

• From Ten Two Studios, tabbed manila book pages in whichever size you prefer. My sample is made with the 4×6 pages.

• A sheet of ivory or manila colored paper.
• A glue stick, or the paper glue of your choice.
• A ruler or straight edge to use as a folding guide.

Start by accordion folding the sheet of paper. The wider the folds, the more the book will be able to expand. If you just need a little expansion room, try 1/2″ folds. My sample book used 1″ folds, which allows for a lot of chunkiness. To keep my folds straight, I used a ruler to press folds in every 2″, and folded those in half, lining up the top and bottom edges of each fold.

Arrange the tabbed pages in the order you’d like them to appear in the finished book, and stack them in front of you, long edge up. Place the folded paper above the stack, oriented so you can flip up the cut end of the paper to expose the first fold. Grab the first tabbed page, and put the long edge of it against that first fold. Apply glue to the paper flap above the fold, and press it down onto the first page.

Flip the first page up, and flip one accordion fold up over it. Grab the second page, and press it against the accordion.

Apply glue to the accordion fold above the page.

Press the fold down onto the second page. Continue ading pages by flipping up the newly glued tabbed page, then the next accordion fold, gluing and folding down.

When the last page has been added, flip it up, and trim away all but one remaing piece of the accordion fold. Apply glue to that last piece, and press it to the back page.

Trim away any excess paper at the top and bottom of the spine.

Here’s what the finished book looks like when it’s expanded.