By Noreen Doll.
Because bound journals won’t lay flat, I was asked to alter a bound book to a spiral book.
Since I am a book lover, it was very difficult for me to cut the binding off this beautiful journal.
However, as a bound journal it wasn’t useful to the owner, who needed the book to open flat and stay open while in use.
First I used a knife to carefully remove the binding.
Then i pulled off several pages at a time and used a paper cutter to trim the edges with glue on them. I only trimmed off enough to remove the glue and straighten the rough edges.
I tried to keep the pages in the same order in which they were removed from the book.
These pages were lined, and the owner also wanted some pages that were unlined.
So we cut several sheets of computer paper to the same size as the journal pages and interspersed them with the lined pages.
I used a Bind It All to attach the covers and pages together.
But if you don’t have one, you could punch 3 or 4 holes along the edge you want to bind and add binder rings.
One of the fun things about this spiral bound book is that you can stand it up with the spiral or rings at the top and the covers spread apart at the bottom.
And here it is open.
As you can see, the pages have small stamped images, so we added some to the plain pages as well.
© Noreen Doll
Elizabeth McCall says
Noreen;
How much do you charge for this service? I have a few cookbooks that I would like to have converted to spiral-bound. A local printer said he could do it, and fortunately I let him convert two rarely-used cookbooks because he simply used the plastic binders found in many offices and not wire spirals.
I like the sample you give and I need cookbooks to lay flat.
Thanks, Beth
Noreen says
Hi Beth, I don’t create or repair books for others, so I’m afraid I can’t help you in that regard. It really isn’t very difficult to do yourself, and it’s a skill that comes in very handy. Good luck with getting your cookbooks done.