I’m always looking to balance the best combination I can find of compactness in my planner, with flexibility. As a general rule, types of planner bindings that most easily allow for pages to be removed or swapped out add bulk. Those that are most compact have the least flexibility.

Thus far, I’ve settled on it being flexible enough for me to have an “annual” section separate from a “daily” section, even if these don’t allow for swapping pages, because most of these things don’t need much changing out for me. But there are a handful of things — bits of reference information I use frequently — that I’d really like to be able to just move from planner to planner, rather than re-making every time. When I saw a YouTube video for a bookbinding style that has removable pages, I realized I could use this approach to make a single (or just two or three) add-in spots in a bound journal or planner.

Essentially, this is going to act in such a way as to almost “button” the added page or booklet into the bound book.

When it’s done, it will look something like this:

(Please note that this is not especially difficult to do, but it’s a little tricky to describe, so be sure to follow along with the images!)

Making the Add-In Tab

You’ll need the book you plan to add the insert to, the booklet you want to insert, a ruler, scissors and/or a craft knife, double-sided tape or glue, and some relatively stiff paper.

First you’ll need to measure and mark where to cut. I made a test version in a regular lined composition book, and then did one in my real planner, which is on grid paper, and some of the photos are from one, some from the other, so that’s why they might not look like they “match,” but the process is the same.

Decide how long you want your “hinge” to be, and measure down from the top of the page and up from the bottom of the page accordingly. You’ll want the hinge to be in the center, or close to it. I decided about how long and where I wanted mine to be and then basically used the nearest lines on my lined paper.

Decide how wide you want your hinge to be, and mark out double that from the inner binding.

You’re going to need to cut through two sheets.

Having separated your two sheets from the rest of the book, cut along the horizontal lines you drew, all the way in to the spine. Then cut along the outermost vertical line. You should have a two-page-thick “flap” that looks something like this:

(There will also be long narrow flaps at the top and the bottom. You don’t need those, so just tuck them out of the way and ignore them for now.)

Now cut only the top sheet of the flap vertically at the halfway point. 

The idea is that you should now have two flaps of the same height, one twice as wide as the other, like this:

Fold the wider flap in half over the narrower flap.

You’re going to adhere the folded flap onto the narrower flap, but only on the outside. We’re making a tube — this is the hinge. You can use glue for this, but I found that it was a bit fiddlier later to get the hinge “pin” in and out without glued corners coming loose and catching, so if you have a good double-sided tape, I recommend that. I placed my tape like so:

(Those two pictures are showing the same thing — just at slightly different angles, to ensure you can tell what’s what.)

If you’re using tape, put it as close to the edges as you can get it without going over the edge. Remove the tape’s backing and stick these together. Or if you’re using glue, glue it and wait for the glue to dry. When you’re done, you should have something like this:

Your booklet needs to have a slit in the “spine” fold that’s the same length as your hinge, or just a smidge longer. I marked, measured, and tested mine with my page flaps before I cut them down to the hinge width, but you don’t have to. You just have to cut the slit.

Insert the hinge through the booklet slit.

Now make a hinge “pin.” I didn’t take pictures of this process. It’s pretty straightforward, though. You need a piece of firm paper that’s the tiniest bit narrower than your hinge, and at least as long. If your paper is heavy enough (like a heavy cardstock), you can use single thickness; if not, make the strip twice as wide as you want it, then fold it in half.

Insert the pin into the hinge, inside the booklet, to hold it in place.

This is surprisingly sturdy, but if you want to remove the booklet, all you have to do is slide the “pin” out.

Dressing it Up

If you want to, you can dress up your hinge by cutting some decorative paper to fit and gluing it over top. (I did this on the one you see at the very top of this post.) Just be sure not to glue the hinge shut!

What to Do with Those Extra Flaps

What about those extra, narrow flaps at the top and bottom? You don’t need them for the hinge binding, so you have some options.

1. You can just cut them off. I wouldn’t recommend tearing them, because if your book is stitched together, then separating these all the way at the spine may compromise the integrity of the pages in the other half of your book that are part of the same paper sheets. But you can trim them fairly close to the spine.
2. You can use them to make a divider page. Either you can sandwich a sheet of paper between the front and back flaps, or glue them together and sandwich them between full-page sheets of paper.
3. A variation on the second option is to sandwich a page protector between the two, to make a see-through page. This is what I opted to do with mine.

If you’re going to go with option three, you probably need double-sided tape, because most glue probably won’t hold it. If you want the page to remain as a usable pocket, be sure not to glue the top (of the paper or the page protector) shut! If you just want to insert something once and then not be able to remove it, remember to insert it before you adhere it shut.

I cut the page protector to size, being sure to keep the bottom and outer edges uncut. Then taped the page protector to the insides of the flaps. And then glued the bottom and the outer edge of the flaps together.

This is what I ended up with:

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