Binding week - Neil

Hi,
Here's Neil's tutorial as I promised earlier in the week. This is one of my favourite binding, so much fun to make. If you have not tried this yet, give it a go and come and link back to show us what you have done. We would love to see :)

How about using all those lovely GelliArt prints you have been collecting and make mini books out of them?

"Skewer Binding"

I don't know about you but I have loads of blank cards accumulated over the years; many many more than I need as I don't make as many cards as I used to. 

I find this binding is a good way of getting through them, and ending up with a book to boot is a bonus!

I've shown the process with undecorated cards so you can see clearly.

You'll need cards and bamboo skewers to start with.

Measure ad cut grooves into one of the cards as shown and then use this as a template. 

 Cut as many pages as you want. 

 Then the fun begins.... thread one skewer through a card; hit one miss one!

 Place another card next to that and then begin to skewer the second page in the same way. The difference this time is that you need to "pick up" the pieces that were missed from the first page as you go along.

 Repeat this process until you have enough pages for what you want to do.

 You will see that the last page has some loose tags....

 Just thread a skewer through these pages to neaten everything up

 Push the skewers through to create a neat line along the top, I tend to leave about a centimetre and a half. Tie a piece of ribbon to one skewer and begin to weave it around them all a few times and tie off.

 This keeps everything nice and neat and ensures the spine will be held in place. Trim the skewers on the bottom and repeat. Your basic book is complete and ready for decorating. You can of course decorate before you assemble too. One other thing I do is to glue the front and back cards. this makes for a stronger cover.

 So, you can have fun and add lots of colours and elements.

The possibilities are endless. 

You can use all your favourite scrapbook papers, anything really.

Products that can be used for this project:

Card Blanks

Scrapbook papers

Ribbon

Distress Inks

Paints

Masks/ Stencils

Clear or rubber stamps

Glue

Hope you liked this project. 

See you tomorrow.