Accordion Binding with Gate Fold Cover

Hello, Diana here with this month’s Mini Album Tutorial. The inspiration from today’s album is from the Book Re-Bound by Jeannine Stein, I used part of the binding technique from her Twelve Month Organizer to make my album.

The materials I used: 6 large kraft envelopes and 2 small ones, cardstock to make the accordion, one piece of cardboard for the back, glue, assorted pattern paper and assorted embellishments.

To make the accordion measure the Length of your biggest envelope, mine was 5”, so I cut two 5” pieces out of a 12X12 cardstock.

Using a Scoring board or Bone folder, make 1” marks along the upper and lower edges of both pieces of cardstock.

Notes from the Author:  when creating an accordion binding, go slowly and make sure the folds are even and neat, resulting in a sturdier book.

Since I have 8 envelopes, and I’ll need a back and a cover that makes a total of 10 spaces, that is why I cut two pieces of cardstock, I joined them to add the four extra spaces I needed.

For the Back Cover cut a piece of cardboard to the same length you did your accordion cardstock, for the width measure your envelope and cut it little longer.

To make the back part of the gate fold cut a piece of 12X12 cardstock to your previous Length, you’ll be scoring two folds that will make the flap of the album, one  will be part of the closing and the other will go over your pages. Since a 12X12 was not big enough I added an extra piece of paper using a border punch to decorate the part where I glued them together.

Adhere your envelopes from back to front, starting with your back cover; I rounded the corners of the accordions two edge parts to give it a nicer look.

Decorate your envelopes before you add them to the accordion, each accordion fold is 1”, to prevent me from decorating that space I marked a line with the same paint I used around the edges of my pattern paper.

Very Important, Score a 1” line on all your envelopes, this is to make it easier to flip the pages, I forgot that step and ended up with a stiff album.

If you have been following my work you’ll know I like to use envelopes on a lot of my projects, this is because where ever I go I save what I can use as memorabilia, in this case I just tucked in each envelope what I kept from the day.

I used glue to adhere my pages to the accordion; you can also use Binding Snaps.

Next glue your pages to the accordion, it is very simple, just add glue to one fold, adhere the page, add glue to the next fold and adhere it to the page, add glue to the back of the fold, repeat.

For the cover I used a thinner piece of cardstock to give it more flexibility.

To make the closing of the fold gate I used two brads and layered them on scalloped circles.

I adhere and extra piece of cardstock to the flap to make it sturdier, the circle scallop you see on the flap is hiding the metal pieces from the brad.

To decorate my pages I used a lot of pattern paper scraps, fabric squares from Basic Grey, decorative tape, punched out shapes and assorted embellishments.

Here is a view of the open album.

As always I hope my monthly tutorial was inspiring and that you’ll soon be making one to keep your memories.

Have an amazing day!

=Di