Bookbinding the Easy Way

Last week I made this little fellow, using some new equipment called 

Bind-It-All or Zutter.

(Watch the little demo on the link)

I first came across this method on 

Liz Plummer's Blog and Gunnel's Blog 

and it's what I have been looking for, for a very long time.........

For the first book I made, I was just using  all sorts of scrap paper, anything I could lay my hand on. 

This is 6" by 6" (15 x 15 cm).

Here it is - the Zutter:

Once I had discovered that you use the same machine for any size, I decided to buy a beginners kit, always a good option on trying something new:

Here is the book without any decoration:

I'm looking forward to making my own sketchbooks with exactly the papers I like, in sizes I choose, it's all very exciting!

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In near future DH and I are going narrowboating, and he always makes an enlargement (in A4 and laminated) of the part of the trip we're doing. So for my second try with the Zutter, I decided to bind these pages as well - for ease of use on the boat.

I made a few mistakes, perhaps I shouldn't have cut the holes for all 12 pages at the same time ;

O) - but all in all I'm very pleased with the result.

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For my own use I also photocopy the route we are taking and paste the pages into my sketchbook, that way I find it easy to know where we are and can add my own drawings and notes. Here is a sample of last years sketchbook:

Collins / Nicholson Guide to the Waterways

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Addition - more on narrowboating:

Carol Sloan (who also have a Bind-It-All) quite rightly asked me what a narrowboat is, so I hasten to add to this post to clarify what I'm on about. ;O)

A narrow is boat is between 45' to 70' (14 - 22 m) long and 7' (2 m) wide, we are usually on a 66' (20 m). Used to transport goods on the English canals and rivers in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries - first by horse-power, later by steam and then by fossil-fuel. As the landscape varies a lot in hight, there is a lot of locks. Now mostly used for leisure and/or houseboats.

It is steered from the back (it's actually me steering here) and the pace is so that you can walk briskly beside it at the towpath - where the horses used to tow the boats.

Here we are at a rather large lock (sometimes only one narrowboat will fit, sometimes two, but tightly) - this tells me it's a river rather than a man-made canal.

And finally a picture of how it used to be - lots of space for cargo and very little space for living quarters, often a whole family would live there.

Picture courtesy of

THE HISTORY OF THE NARROW BOAT STEAMER – SO FAR…..