Bind-It-All: Flat Stanley Adventures

This project made with love is for my nephew, Alex, who lives in California. He chose my family to help him with his Flat Stanley project. Instead of sending the usual postcards and brochures to show where Flat Stanley has visited, I decided a scrapbook of adventures was in order. I left the last two pages of the book blank for Alex to add photos of his class presentation with Flat Stanley.

Knowing that the project would be handled by first graders, I chose a very heavy duty, thick book board for the pages plus a handy kraft-colored Cover-All. Though this is great in concept, sometimes really thick boards plus layering or placement of thick embellishments close to the edge to be punched can pose a problem. I tend to go overboard by adding chunky embellishments all over the place!

To get around the “too-chunky-to-fit-the-punching-channel” issue, I recommend punching the pages before embellishment. This is also a good option if you hadn’t really thought of how you were going to layout your project at the onset (usually my problem when I’m doing projects on the fly).

Add your base layers of paper to the boards. Punch the boards and acrylic sheet that will attach your pages to the Cover-All.

Embellish the pages to your heart’s content. Chunk it up, add thickness anywhere you want. Now is also a good time to think of other things might want to add between the pages like postcards, brochures, other punchable mementos. Also decorate the cover and spine of the Cover-All if you want to at this point.

When you’re ready to assemble, put your pages in order with the acrylic sheet in front of your first page. Note: I have a strange habit of cutting off an inch or two of the acrylic page that fits into the Cover-All pocket. I just like how it fits better that way. That’s how I roll!

Thread the pages onto the o-wire starting with the bottom page. The “teeth” of the o-wire should be sticking out of the top with the acrylic page as the last page fed onto the teeth of the o-wire.

Adjust the Bind-it-All to the size of the o-wire. Starting from one end of the o-wire, you will close the wire in groups if your project is larger than the width of the Bind-It-All.

After binding all the length of o-wire, move the acrylic page to the back of the pages and then slip into the pocket on in the inside of the Cover-All. That's it! Continue to add more to the book if desired.