Slot books

There has been a discussion of slot books on the book-art Yahoo group since Carol of http://barnaclegoosepaperworks.blogspot.com/ posted a picture on her blog of a beautiful one she had made.

I am not a book making expert but I had been shown how to do this in the past and I have had another go at making one.

I used A4 copier paper, folded in half, but I think something stiffer or smaller might have been more successful.

There are two types of pages in the book which I have called ‘slit’ pages and ‘slot’ pages.

‘Slot’ pages have a slot cut along the fold, leaving 4 cm uncut at either end.






‘Slit’ pages have 4 cm slits cut at each end of the fold.






Now for the tricky bit. I folded the slit page, long side to long side, without creasing it, and slid it through the slot. I lined up the slits and the slot and gently opened out the slit paper.





I ended up with one piece of paper threaded through the other.













You build up the book by alternating the two types of page. Each slit page goes through two slot pages. I found this was easiest to do by threading the slit page through two slots at once.

In this picture you can see the second slot page [turquoise] behind the green one.



This may be clearer. The slot pages are the turquoise and green ones. The pink page has already been threaded through and straightened out. I am threading the grey page through slots in the turquoise and the green pages. To add another slit page I would thread it thought the green slot page and another slot page – and so on ad infinitum.

I think with enough pages and a bit of care you could thread the final slit page through the last and first slot pages and end up with a book with no front or back.


Here is quality control inspecting the finished product.

Please let me know if you have any questions.