A word of warning: making booklets is fun and addictive.

I didn’t mean for it to become a hobby or anything — I just wanted a few booklets for my homemade traveller’s notebook. I made a month-long homeschool planner, and then a booklet of the knitting patterns I’m working through, and then a booklet that’s just blank paper for my kids to scribble through. It’s my decoy booklet, designed to keep my two-year-old away from the more important ones. Does it work? Not a chance.

We’ve done calendar booklets with illustrations by my daughter as Christmas presents. I’ve printed out our Outdoor Hour Challenge books as booklets to take along on hikes.

I’d like to do a book list booklet with all the books recommended in our homeschool curriculum. It would be so handy to have a list when we pop into the library or bookstores — not to mention the used curriculum sales are coming up this spring. With any luck, I’ll avoid buying a fourth copy of Misty of Chincoteague.

Mostly, though, the booklets I print are my monthly homeschool planners. I do one at a time so I can adjust our schedule as life changes. You might think it’s tedious to make a new booklet each month, but if that’s the case, you need to go reread this post from the beginning (start at the part that says “making booklets is fun and addictive”).

Make Your Own Booklet: Instructions

1) Print Your Pages

After you’ve decided on what to put in your booklet, you’ll need to print it off. The most important part of printing off a booklet is making sure the pages are in the right order, and it’s not all that intuitive. Imagine all your pages in a stack and then folded in half — this is your booklet.  The very outside sheet is going to have your first page on the left and your last page on the right. The next paper will have the second page and the second-last page on the front, and the third page and the third-last page on the back. Yeah, I’m already confused. Trust me, trying to do this all manually is far too much work.

Luckily Acrobat Reader will print out booklets for you, so all you need to do is save your document as a PDF and then open it with Acrobat Reader, which is a free program. And I wish someone had told me that before I bought the Create Booklet app for Macs. Oh well, no regrets. Create Booklet really is a handy little program; it’s designed specifically for making booklets, so it lets me scale my pages, change my margins, add page numbers, and more. I like it.

I’m assuming you’ll stick to free, though. After you’ve opened your PDF in Acrobat Reader, click print and then select Booklet. This is a screenshot from my Mac; it may look slightly different on your screen.

2) Add a Cover

After your pages are printed out and in order — I can’t stress this enough — you’ll want to add a cover. I recommend using something thicker than regular paper. I use cardstock personally — I like that it’s stiff, but still easy to fold.

3) Fold the Pages in Half

Folding your papers in half is pretty straightforward. If you’re a perfectionist, you’ll want to fold a few of them at a time so that you get a sharp crease. I’m sure you could be quick and fold them all at once — but I’m a perfectionist, so I wouldn’t know.

4) Measure the Hole Spacing

Find the middle of your page and make a mark (4.25 inches from the top if you’re using a standard 8.5 x 11) — then measure out from there. On this booklet, I added four more markings, each an inch apart. I don’t think it matters too much how many holes you add — I’ve made some booklets with just three holes and they’ve held up fine.

Take a moment again and make sure your pages are in order, especially if you let the papers out of your sight for even a second while your two-year-old was in the room.

5) Poking Some Holes

Once you’re happy with the hole placement, go ahead and make the holes. I like to secure the sheets together with paper clips and then poke through the sheets with the same stabber tool (an awl?) that I used to make my journal cover. It doesn’t take much pressure — I just push down against the pencil marking and then twist Stabby McStabber back and forth until the tip comes through the cover on the other side.

6) Stitch the Booklet

For the sewing, I use white waxed cord, but I’m secretly convinced I could use dental floss instead. One day I’m totally going to try.

Ok, I just googled dental floss. Did you know some brands are made with Teflon? Ew! Maybe I’ve got it backward; I should be flossing with my sewing thread, not sewing with my floss. Ha ha ha! I’m just kidding — I never floss.

Whatever you choose to sew with, you won’t need much at all. I cut a generous foot and a half and it was far too much.

Sewing is easy enough. Start in the middle and move your needle in and out all the way to the top. Yup, all two stitches.

When you reach the top, turn around and stitch your way back down, going in where you went out before and out where you went in before. When you reach the bottom, come back up to the middle in the same manner.

Once you’ve finished sewing, tie the thread off in a double knot and snip off the excess. Don’t worry about the knot being in the way — I never notice it at all.

This is the stitching from the outside. Looks nice and tidy, doesn’t it!

7) Trim your Booklet

If you have more than a few pages in your booklet, they won’t line up neatly on the outside so you’ll need to trim them. No, you don’t have to. But I have to. Normally I trim my booklets to five inches wide. There’s no real reason for that, beyond that it’s easy to measure out with my cutting mat and ruler.

When I started making booklets, I trimmed them with an Exacto knife. It worked, but sometimes it took me a few tries to get a nice, even edge. Then, back in December, I discovered my fabric rotary cutter slices through paper like butter.

Whoa — did you hear that? That was the sound of all the quilters clicking away en masse. Look, I know you should never use your fabric cutter on paper. I’ll buy another one for my fabric, I promise.

Actually, I have to go to the fabric supply store anyway because I need a new cutting board — I damaged it last month when I forgot it’s not an ironing board. So melty.

8) Decorate the Cover

Once your booklet is neatly trimmed, the only thing left to do is decorate the cover. If you picked a pretty cardstock, that won’t even be necessary.  I use a plain kraft paper and I like to spruce it up. I pick a stamp from my children’s stamp collection — and by “pick a stamp”, I mean I dig around until I find the butterfly stamp. I have six different booklets that are marked with the same butterfly. Hopefully, you have more common sense than me and write the month’s name or something.

Aren’t they great? I have way too much fun making them. Have you made a booklet before? What are your best tips?