There are magazines that I keep that I have no intention of ripping up. My collection of cycling magazines and Real Simples are too full of lovely things for me to think about trying to split them all up. However I have kept a ton of magazines that I don’t really use but that contain good stuff I don’t want to get rid of.

In the past when I have ripped out articles I have paperclipped or stapled them together and they have ended up all creased and flimsy that I haven’t wanted to use them again.

However since we are going to be re-doing our lounge (hopefully – at some point) I wanted to make some space, and clear some collections out, and I came up with making each article into it’s own booklet, then grouping the booklets together in acordian folders.

A Short, (and probably obviously) How-To About Turning an Article into a Booklet.

Here is the article as it looked when I ripped it out of the magazine. Note that there are a couple of adverts in there, including the first page, which means we have to open it up to find out what it’s about. That’s going to be a pain.

However if I turn the first page over and stick it to the advert on the second page I will have got rid of them both and the article will read smoothly again. yay! (ok this doesn’t always work but it’s nice to get rid of the adverts that you can, so that you have fewer pages to deal with, and so that you don’t get distracted.)

It’s hard to see, (though if you click on the page it will take you to flickr where you can see bigger versions) but there are four bits of tape – 2 down each side – which you fold over the other side, holding the two piece of paper in place.  (Note – it’s worth doing this on a table cloth, because the tape doesn’t stick to it very well, and therefore it’s easy to turn the two pages over when you want to folder over the bits of tape.)

If your ripped edge is uneven then you’ll need to cut it. Ideally the best thing to use would be a paper guillotine but since I don’t have one of those, (or access to one) I just use scissors.

Then you just go through the article, taping the inner edges together so that it forms a booklet.

And there you have it: A giant hand finished booklet!

Tips and Hints

Sometimes there are ads on the side that you can get rid of. Assuming there is also a full page ad on the back, you can snip off the side ad and stick it over the ad on another page, therefore keeping your booklet slim and distraction free.

Sometime, when you cut off the jagged edge with scissors you end up with a wiggly edge instead. If that happens then tape up as normal…

 

…but remember to turn the pages over and tape on the other side too so that you cover the sticky bits of tape up with more tape. Then just fold them up and crease the tape so that it sits flat and folds open properly.

Sometime there is a cool picture on the left hand side of the first double spread. It doesn’t have a title so I don’t want to use it as my front page, but it’s inspiring and too good to waste…

…so I replace the advert at the end of the article (left) with the picture from the beginning, by taping the two pages together, as before.

Then I sort them into categories, and put them into the right acordion folder…

…which I label on the spine so that I can store them upright like books.

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Hope that was useful. 🙂