Magazine Folio holder

This post is a re-write of an article I wrote many years ago for the Discworld stamp journal, The Stanley Howler Stamp Journal.  The purpose of the article and this post is to create a non-damaging folio cover for magazines so they can be neat and sorted, while still just as easy to read, plus can be removed without difficulty if needed.

 

All of the sizes and measurements given here are for A5 magazines (booklets made when an A4 piece of paper is folded in half and stapled in the middle).  If you are dealing with magazines of a different size, you will need to work out your own sizes.  A good rule of thumb is to ensure that the cover is a few millimetres larger than the cover of your magazines to allow for movement and to protect the contents.

Materials

• Thick card (posterboard or similar) NOT corrugated card for the spine in particular as it will not have the necessary compressive strength.  Two larger pieces for the cover (15.1cm by 21.8 cm) and one narrow piece (21.8 cm by the width of your spine- for an 8 journal cover 2.5 cm is good, for a 10 journal cover, I am using a 3 cm width piece)

• A sharp knife (plus bandaids/ first aid kit/ blood bank depending on how clumsy you are!
• A steel ruler
• Cutting mat
• Thick card or chipboard (for best effect the card should be difficult to fold- about the thickness of a hard cover book’s cover.).
• PVA glue
• Pretty paper (It is possible to get creative here if you like- fabric can be used if first stuck onto a plain piece of paper and there is practically an unlimited number of different colours and designs of paper available)
• String or thin cord (this must be STRONG- if you can easily break it with your hands it is too weak)
• Lots of clean, scrap paper and newspaper
• Large flat weights (I use old textbooks)

Method

Take your two large pieces of card and the paper you will use for the cover (green in my case).  Apply an thin, even coat of glue to one side of your card and glue to the paper.

To prevent wrinkles, immediately place this, paper side down, onto a pile of your newspaper with a clean piece of scrap paper in between (so newsprint doesn't get onto your cover).  Then place a heavy book ontop. This draws the moisture of the glue out of the cover paper and the weight stops wrinkles having a chance to form.

Wait until dry, then turn over and glue the sides over.  One neat way to do this is to trim the corners on a 45 degree angle to the card corner, at least one centimetre away from the card.  Fold this over to the card and glue down.  Repeat on all corners.

Then fold and glue each side down.  Leave to dry.

In the meantime, you can also do the same thing with the spine piece, or if you choose to add mock headband affects (see step 7), then you could skip this or just colour/paint the ends.

I just coloured the ends in on my spine as I will be covering it later

Take the spine and use the back of a knife or the steel ruler to place even 'notches' in the ends of the card where the string will go.  This ensures the string stays in place.

Tape one end of the string to the back of the spine and wrap the string TIGHTLY around the spine to create the necessary number of loops for your journal.  

Tape the other end in place, then use craft glue or hot glue along the entire back to secure the string.  

Back of spine after wrapping thread, before adding glue

Front of spine.  Each length of thread will hold one magazine

Optional:  Inbetween the string on the ends, take some contrasting coloured embroidery floss or similar and glue lengths in between.  This gives the appearance of headbands of a book (see Part 3 of my Book binding series to find out what these are in more detail)
Over this, glue a piece of paper, cut to a little narrower and shorter than the spine.  This helps to secure the string and also provides a good surface to glue the book together with later.  Leave to dry.
Take another piece of paper to make the exterior spine.  This paper should be fairly thick and sturdy as it will be under the most long term stress.  The paper should be taller by at least 5 cm and the width of your spine plus 1.5 cm to allow the paper to fold, plus 2-3 cm on each side for the spine paper to be glued to the covered.  In practical terms for me, that meant a piece of paper 28 cm tall by 15 cm wide.

Carefully place the spine card onto the spine and ensure it is centred.  Mark this position, then glue the back of the spine card (the bit with the paper covering the strings) to this spine paper. Let dry.

Now you can glue the covers to the spine paper.  You want to leave room for the paper to fold or your holder will not be able to close.  Try to have a even gap of 0.75-1cm on each side.  One easy way is to use a bit of scrap card cut to size that you can use to align the cover in the correct place.

Here you can see the brown bit of scrap card I used to position the cover in the right place and straight.  You can also see that I have glued green thread between the gold string on the spine prior to gluing it to the spine paper to get a headband effect and to hide the card

Glue both covers into place and let dry.

Optional- if you are using thinner paper or you think it will get a lot of wear, you may wish to add a bit of extra reinforcing paper on the top and bottom parts.  If so, do so now.

Use a pair of scissors or a sharp knife with ruler to cut the spine paper at a slight angle.  You want this cut to be to the corner of each spine card so the paper can be folded over and glued (see the picture below).

Make the cuts at a slight angle.  Note the extra paper I've glued in first to reinforce the ends of the spines

Once the sides are glued in place, use a ruler and a knife to cut the little left over piece off, top and bottom.

Use a ruler and a sharp knife to cut off this extra piece of paper flush with the edge of the book holder

Final step is to cut some endpapers inside to neaten things up.  Either measure up some paper a few millimetres smaller than the journal holder or use one or two pieces of A4 paper.  If you can find a piece of paper long enough great, but otherwise cut both pieces to a length so that one is long enough for one cover to the edge of the other and the other the size of the other cover.  It's your choice if you would like the edge of the paper showing on the back or the front or back, but I do suggest you glue the longer piece of paper (the bit that will cover the spine) down first, then the smaller piece of paper.  Let everything dry.

Before use, lay it flat on a table, outside facing up and run your thumb down the fold lines for the covers.  This helps neatens everything up and ensures the folds look right.

To use, open each magazine in the middle and insert it under a string.  That's it!  If you have any extra bits and bobs, a page protector with with the folder holes trimmed off works well either on an extra string or inserted in or around another magazine.