Saturday, February 16, 2013

Mini Album Binding-Pros & Cons

I recently watched Laura Denison's "Perfect Hinge Binding" stream over on Ustream (click here for link to Laura's stream of new binding" and at first I thought it sounded like a great binding system but when I went to try it I knew right away that it wasn't for me.

I made the Perfect Hinge Binding but was unsure of the strength of the "flaps/pages". I was also terrible at trying to line up each section on the spine straight - all over the place LOL.

The Perfect Hinge Binding was Laura's way of creating a binding system which would allow for either an odd or an even amount of pages in your mini albums. Also, Laura created the hinges as part of her pages. The way this binding system was created, allowed you to have more styles of pages in your album, as opposed to pocket/envelope style throughout. Great thought process, Laura!

Anyway, you know me and my fight with binding systems and the need for perfection all the time. I just had to play around with this Perfect Hinge Binding system a bit to see if it could work for me. I'm still playing around with it (in my head at the moment) but I did come up with a couple of variations on the Stack The Deck to allow for both an odd amount of pages as well as an even amount.

I have uploaded two variations onto my YouTube channel and you can click the links from here:

Stack the Deck + One
Perfect Hinge Binding - Doubled

I have also written a couple of tutorials on how I created the above two adaptations and you can get them here:

Stack the Deck + One
Perfect Hinge Binding - Doubled

Now Kathy Orta on the other hand adapted the "Hidden Hinge" binding system for her mini albums and I also had problems with this binding system (shock, horror!). Kathy listened and devised a way around the problems I was having by making a cut-off cover where you could attach a front & back cover thereby hiding the ridges that appeared in all my Hidden Hinge bindings. This adaptation of Kathy's Hidden Hinge is shown in Kathy's "Sophistication" mini album tutorial and is available on Kathy's web site here.

This Sophistication style mini album is OK for some albums, but I don't want them ALL that way so I'll alternate between my adapted version of Kathy's Hidden Hinge (the Stacked Hinge) and the Sophistication style Hidden Hinge.

Well, I'm guessing you're still as confused as me when it comes to the "Perfect" binding system and I'm sure we'll continue to strive for the "Perfect" binding system for our mini albums. Or are you happy with the binding system you currently use?

2 comments:

  1. I'm a glue user so when I use Kathy's they tend to be too thick just like other accordion bidingings. I did see Laura's 'perfect hinge' but honestly I've seen it before ;) Pincone Press used something very similar to it on a few of their kits but what I really thought of was a waterfall page binding turned to the side lol. So I call it the waterfall binding since its a little weird to call anything perfect. I do like it though. I use Recollections black card stock (not textured) so it's pretty thick and I don't really feel that it will tear. But, now you have me thinking that I should check out your adaptation on YouTube :D Better safe than sorry! I love your videos btw, and I've seen you (I think) here and there over on Ustream. Can't wait to get caught up reading your blog! Oh, and I'm totally fired up about making you ink storage tower (that's how I came to find your blog).

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  2. I obsess over the perfect binding system as well. The page by page binding method, where you bind each page onto the other one separately seems pretty good. I prefer the hidden hinge over the stack the deck yet the hidden hinge seems to have an odd front and back crease where it meets the chipboard. I haven't checked out the updated versions of it yet

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