Today, I’m going to show you how I print and assemble booklets and travelers’ notebook inserts. This is the same process I use for all my printable booklets.
I also made a handy video to help walk you through the process.
Downloading Your Goal Tracker
I’ve tried to make the process of accessing my free printable goal tracker as easy as possible.
Once you sign up for the download, you will see a link to automatically download the zip folder.
To find the file on your computer, go ahead and open your downloads folder. You should find it there right at the top.
Double click it and then click “extract all”.
You can click “browse” to save the files in a specific place; otherwise, they will stay in your Downloads folder. Now click extract.
You will now have a folder of the two print files – easy print and eco-print.
Printing Your Easy Print Goal Tracker
Just as the name implies, you don’t have to do anything special when printing the easy print files.
Double-click the file to open it in your default PDF viewer – this is usually a tab in your browser. Go ahead and press Ctrl+P or click the print button and click to open the “more settings” menu.
You want to make sure that you do not have two-sided or double-sided printing enabled. Also make sure that the scale says “fit to printable area”, “scale to fit” or some other similar variation. This ensures the full document will print on the page.
So now send it to print. Easy, right?
How to Assemble The Easy Print Booklet
Now it’s time to go ahead and put it all together. This is the same process I use for all my DIY booklets and inserts.
For the easy print booklet, you can either fold the cover page in half or cut it since it’s going to be a bulkier booklet than the eco print.
I usually cut it in half by measuring five and a half inches on a standard letter sheet paper. Once cut, fold it in half to form the front and back covers.
Quarter-fold all the remaining pages to create “signatures”. These will insert into each other to form your booklet. This is a really easy process.
Easy Book Binding Techniques
Once all the signatures are stacked together in the booklet, it’s time to decide how you want to bind it. If you are comfortable with sewing, you can hand sew or use a machine to run a seam along the fold of all the pages.
To keep it easy for people that might not sew, you can do a simple hole-punch binding. Make sure all your pages are in the correct order.
Start with the cover of your booklet and punch two holes on the fold. You want to only punch a half-circle into the fold so that when the book is open, it creates a full circle. I like to punch my holes about ½ to 1” from the top and bottom edges.
Slide the next page inside the cover. Make sure they line up and punch the holes using the cover sheet as your guide.
Do this for all the pages so that your holes line up. The middle signature will have holes a little bit smaller than the outside. This actually works nicely for our binding.
With all your holes punched, open the booklet and grab some cord.
I like to use an elastic cord but any type of cording will do. Hold the cord along the spine of your booklet and measure out three times the distance between your two holes.
Thread the cord through the two holes, with the ends on the inside of your booklet. Knot it three or four times to make sure it’s nice and secure.
Trim the tails of your cording and slide it so that the knot is resting inside one of the punched holes. And there you have your easy print booklet.
How To Print Double-Sided Notebook Inserts
The second technique I will show you uses my eco-print file. I call it eco-print because it utilizes a double-sided printing feature most new printers have. You can also manually flip your paper to print on both sides. I set up these files for this method of printing.
The eco-print file uses half the paper of the easy print version.
The same as before, open your file in a pdf viewer and click print.
This time, when opening your “more settings” menu select two-sided or double-sided printing.
Be sure to have the page “flip on long edge”. This way the sheets will flip as if you’re turning the page of a book versus flipping upside down on the short edge.
Putting Together a DIY Travelers Notebook Insert
To assemble the eco-print booklet, start by cutting all the sheets in half. Measure out five and a half inches on the long edge to cut.
Go ahead and fold every page in half to form a single sheet signature. Be sure to line up your pages in the right order as you fold. If a page seems out of order, fold it in the opposite direction and see if that matches.
Slide your signatures into each other and bind using one of the methods I explained earlier.
I personally really like the eco-print inserts best since there is no wasted paper and a much slimmer finished product.
Get Support Working Towards Your Goals
Don’t forget to download your free goal tracker and tag me in pictures of your finished booklets @sparkfreely!
If you would like to connect with other like-minded people as we tackle our goals and spark happiness in our lives and community, please join the Project Happy Circle on Patreon.
