New Tutorial

I meant to get this tutorial up here long before now….however my laptop decided to call it quits on me recently. Luckily I was able to get most of my files and photos and thank goodness for back ups! This is the 4th computer that has suddenly died on me over the years – so I learned the hard way to back things up. After the first time, where I lost EVERYTHING, I learned how to back things up from then on. Anyway, because of my not so great history with PC’s, I decided to go for a Mac this time around. So far I love it, but I’m still getting used to it so I’m a bit slow with things.

Now for the tutorial! This is a fun and easy project, a bit time consuming but totally worth it in the end! It’s an address/ contacts book. I made one for my mum for her birthday this month and I think I’m going to make a smaller version for myself to take with me when I move away this summer.

What you need:

-A lot of paper! cardstock weight, double sided. A good mix of patterned paper and plain cardstock works best. (this is a great time to go through your stash and use up some paper you’ve been hanging onto for awhile)

– 2 pieces of 12 x 12 chipboard sheets or craftyboard for the front and back cover

– A Bind it All Machine and the largest sized coils you have

– Stickers, embellishments, ribbon, etc. (anything you want to embellish the pages with but try to keep them as flat as possible)

– inks (for inking the edges of the pages if you so desire)

– print outs for each page (please feel free to use mine if you’d like – download them here)

– Letter stickers (flat) for the inside pages and puffy letter stickers for the cover (such as Thickers)

(Please excuse my messy desk in the photos!)

1. Cut 2 pieces of chipboard/ craftyboard to 9.25 x 12″

2. Choose your paper and cut each piece to 9 x 12″

3. Cover both your chipboard cover pieces with paper and trim excess. Sand the edges until smooth.

4. Stack your pages together and punch holes using the bind it all (you’ll have to do it in sections)

5. Punch holes through cover pieces with the Bind it All then insert coils through all pages and covers and bind together.

6. Print out enough sheets (to fill in name, address, phone, etc) for each page. Download mine here

7. Trim pages, then ink edges (I used Jumbo Java ink)

8. Glue a sheet onto each page

9. Once all sheets are glued onto the pages, it’s time to add the letter stickers. I used Remarks Alphabet stickers by American Crafts. For more popular letters, I used more than 2 pages (either 3 or 4 depending on the letter).

10. Now finish off your book by adding a title on the front. I choose to use “Contacts” but you could put “Addresses” or “Numbers” or anything you’d like