How to Bind Wedding Albums at Home

Store-bought wedding albums can cost you a fortune, and finding the right album for your photos can take hours of fruitless shopping. If you want a custom wedding photo album without spending an excessive amount of money, you can make your own at home. Even beginning bookbinders can create beautiful wedding albums that are perfect for their wedding photos. With a few bookbinding tools and materials and an afternoon, you can create the perfect wedding album.

Things You'll Need

• Binder's board
• Straight-edge ruler
• Utility knife
• Heavy weight paper
• Bone folder
• Bookbinding awl
• Decorative paper or book cloth
• Polyvinyl acetate adhesive
• Glue brush
• Ribbon
• Tapestry needle

Instructions

1. Cut two pieces of 9-inch tall and 11-inch wide board. Use your utility knife and straight edge ruler to make accurate cuts.

2. Cut a 9-inch tall and 3-inch wide spine piece. Use your utility knife and straight edge ruler to make accurate cuts.

3. Cut 12 sheets of heavyweight paper into 22-inch long and 9-inch tall sheets. Use your utility knife and straight edge ruler to make accurate cuts.

4. Gather the sheets into three piles of four sheets each, and fold each stack in half width-wise. These are your wedding album folios.

5. Work over the creases with your bone folder, and using a straight edge and utility knife, trim 1/8 inch off each folio's right edge.

6. Punch sewing holes with a bookbinding awl. They should fall 1 1/2 inches from the top and bottom of each folio.

7. Draw three equidistant lines along the length of the spine piece. Punch sewing holes 1 1/2 inches from the spine piece's top and bottom along each of these lines.

8. Lay a sheet of decorative paper or book cloth facedown on your table. The sheet should measure at least 28 inches long and 10 1/2 inches tall.

9. Place the board on the paper or book cloth. Place the first board 3/4 inches from the paper or cloth edges, and trace around it. Position the spine piece 3 mm from the first board's inner outline, and trace around it. Set the final board edge 3 mm away from the spine piece's inner outline and trace. As you're tracing, make sure the boards line up along the top and bottom. Trim the excess paper to create a 3/4-inch border around the set of outlines.

10. Apply polyvinyl acetate adhesive to the boards, and adhere the boards to the covering material. Use the outlines to guide your placement. Work over each piece of board with your bone folder to eliminate air bubbles.

11. Miter the covering material's corners. Fold the tip of each corner toward the center of your board to create a diagonal crease. Use scissors to cut just outside of the crease to create your miters.

12. Turn in the covering material edges. Beginning with the top and bottom edges, and ending with the side edges, apply adhesive to the 3/4-inch covering material border, and adhere it to the album cover's interior. Use your bone folder to work out air bubbles from the edges and to make sure the turn-ins are well adhered.

13. Apply your paste-down to the cover's interior. The paste-down is a sheet of decorative paper that measures 1/8 inch smaller on all sides than your finished cover. Glue the back side of the paste-down, and carefully mount it on the album's interior cover. Work over with your bone folder to eliminate air bubbles.

14. Allow the cover to dry, and then re-punch the sewing holes.

15. Thread a tapestry needle with ribbon, and sew through the first folio's top sewing station, traveling from inside to out. Sew through the first upper station on the spine, and bring the ribbon down to the first bottom station. Sew through the front, and tie the ribbon ends into a square knot at the first folio's center. You can tie a bow over the square knot, or you can trim the excess ribbon.

16. Repeat the sewing for the last two folios; adhere them to the cover through the next two sets of sewing holes.