the cinch binding tool

When I was in college and a design intern at a local firm, one of my jobs was to put together proposals that were bound with a wire-o machine. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the repetitive task—unless they were needed in the blink of an eye.

I've been wanting to put together a calendar or some other book type project using this binding but the machines always seemed out of my budget or too large. When I recently discovered The Cinch I was thrilled! Now I can tackle some ideas I had on hold and I can make little books for my C who loves writing on pads.

I put this sample book together with some scraps. I used an edited version of my Bubbles pattern for the cover (which is wrapped around towards the inside) and cut out dividers with tabs to separate pages in the book. It's not my favorite looking thing right now but it was a simple way to get my feet wet.

The machine itself is really well made and it punched holes like butter. The only complaint I have is that the holes are circles—I wish they were rectangles. The Zutter machine has rectangle holes but I wish it were wider (to finish larger projects with less punching). In any case, the Cinch is simply sturdier—I like that.

Lessons learned:

- Don't do what I did! Read the instructions or at a minimum watch this video before using this machine. I always have the tendency to jump right in and miss out on useful information. The video, for example, gave me a quick tip that would've helped me tremendously with lining up the pages.

- Next time I make tabbed dividers, I won't make them the same width of the covers. The width of the front and back covers need to be wider, so that the tabs don't stick out of the right side of the book.

If you had one of these machines what would you make?

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FYI - the machine I have was a personal purchase that I made at Archiver's (w/a coupon!). It was not sent to me for review.