How to Make Playing Card Notebooks: Bound Books

Here’s the second style of playing-card notebook: a simplified stitch-bound style. This style takes a little more rough handling than the accordion, due to the introduction of good old E6000 at the spine. Anyway, here goes:

You begin with two playing cards, and a lot of small pieces of paper. The paper should be about 1/2″ shorter than the height of your cards, and about 1/2″ shorter than the width of both cards, like you see here.

You can make this book with many or few pages. We’re going to bundle the pages up into something called “signatures,” which are groups of 5-6 pages each. I’m going to make this book with three signatures, but feel free to use just one, or up to five.

Anyway, to make a signature, stack up 5 or 6 of these small pieces of paper, and then fold them in half together, as you see here. Make a good crease at the fold.

Then, flatten the stack back out. Using that crease you made as a guide, staple the pages together in the center. For this kind of book, one staple will be plenty.

When I’m making a book with several signatures, I like to place the staple in a different location on each one, so that I can stack them together more tightly in the finished book.

You’ll need a strong, flexible material to make a spine for your book. I’m using some awesome library binding canvas I found at SCRAP (score of the year!), but you can also use oilcloth.

Cut a strip of this material that’s as tall as your cards, and about 2″ wide.

Now, you’ll want to see how wide to make the spine of your book. So put all your signatures together and place them between your two cards, like this. Move the cards apart to gauge how wide the spine needs to be.

Now, glue the strip of binding material to the cards. You’re gluing it to the back sides of the cards, and leaving enough space between the cards to fit all your signatures. I use glue stick for this step, by the way – applied heavily, it’ll bond, especially because you’ll be putting the book in a binder clip later on to dry.

Flip your cover over so you’re looking at the back. Put a wide line of E6000 along the spine – but not too close to the ends! (You don’t want it oozing in the next step.)

Press the signatures into the E6000.

Fold the book closed, and take a look at it edge-on, like this. Make sure all the signatures are still in contact with the E6000. Then, put a binder clip or two on the spine, and let your book dry a while.

When it’s dry, you may notice that the E6000 has crept up onto the first and last page a bit, and they won’t open all the way. If this happens, I just glue-stick those pages to the insides of the covers.

Interesting little repurposing note: Laura brought a lot of these casino cards to the meeting. See how they’re drilled? Apparently, the casinos change out their card decks all the time, and they put holes in them so they can’t be used again. If you have a casino in your area, perhaps you have access to a gold mine of book covers.

I covered them with some paper, and loved how they looked.

Tagged as: paper, recycled, tutorial