Enabler Alert! Cool Product Find…
Aug 1st, 2008 by Jen
Back in June when Susan and I ventured to the Great American Scrapbook Convention, we stopped by the Inky Antics booth. Of course they had their slew of adorable stamps, and Jackie was demonstrating coloring techniques. After admiring her coloring techniques and chatting with her for a minute, she pulled out a binding system. My mind automatically went into the “time consuming, bulky, difficult and expensive” mode. THEN she showed it off…and I bought it. LOL!! Turns out it’s not time consuming. I put together the book shown below in about 15 minutes {including cutting all the paper}. Not bulky at all! It can easily fit into a desk drawer! Difficult…nope. I’m pretty sure my mom could figure this out {hi Mom!}. Expensive…about $30…that’s $30 less than the Bind-It-All that I have {collecting dust}.
**Note…I do not see this on the Inky Antics site, nor do I know where else it is being sold. HERE is the customer service page if you wish to contact them. 
HERE is what I found trying to do a search with the product name/manufacturer {Carl Manufacturing Co. Ltd.}.
ETA: HERE is the link for the Inky Antics page that has this product.
Also, Taylor is also going to be selling these by the start of next week on her online store, Taylored Expressions! YAY!!!
**I checked to see if the BIA coils will work with this. It looks like it will be a very tight squeeze, but if you really wanted it to work, you could do it. You would have to hand squeeze them, tho.
**My chipboard is very thin. It was actually part of paper packaging.
**I do not know if it will need replacement blades. I imagine it’s more like a punch that can be sharpened with foil after several uses.
Let’s put a little book together, shall we?
First, pics of the product…
On this pic, the paper placement flap is folded under…
I put together a book using thin chipboard, vellum cardstock {as dividers} and 60 sheets of copy paper all cut to 4.25″ x 5.5″. Please note that I said THIN chipboard. This is not made to go through the thick stuff.
View of me lifting up where you slide the paper under to line it up. This is magnetic, so your paper won’t slide…YAY!
Thin chipboard is all lined up…
Flip down the flap that is used to line up paper. You can see the chipboard now hanging over the edge, ready to be punched.
The punch is slid on and lined up in the grooves, ready to punch!
Holey Holes…
All done with one, now onto the rest…
Not shown… A cool feature that the punch has is a plastic “catch” for all the punched pieces. Easy peasy clean up!
The book and the coil {which comes in MANY different colors} ready to get hitched…
Here we go round and round…
Viola {15 minutes start to finish!}…
Are you saying, “Um, that doesn’t look done to me!” Well, I just wanted to show off the product today. You can add DP before or after punching. If you add it after, you will have that “seam” where the binding is. I am sure that I will be getting a couple of questions in regards to this product and I will be editing this post to answer those. Also, I am going to try to give IA a call and find out if you can order these through them.
Thanks for sharing this! I have been thinking and thinking and thinking about a bind-it-all, just cannot make the plunge! This is very similar to the CIRCA system they sell on Levenger (www.levenger.com)…I am going over there to see if they now sell spiral bindings!!
I love, love this—-I haven’t bought the Bind it all—thinking it was too much for my occasional use, but I may be able to do $30!!! TFS and I look forward to finding out where to purchase this!
Super cool Jen!!! My BIA has been collecting dust too. THIS new binding tool looks cool! Hope you show us your finished book soon
I keep debating about a BIA also, but am afraid I just wouldn’t use it enough. This binder looks very interesting for 1/2 the price. I went to Inky Antics and it was on their website for $29.95.
Hi Jen,
That seems like it is much easier than the Bind It All. I too, have it and have only used it one time and that was way over a year ago.
I can’t wait to see the finished product.
I saw something very similar to this several years ago and I think it was by Carl. I am wondering if it only takes the plastic coils? I love my bind it all but it is cumbersome to take around, but I also don’t like plastic coils (Office Max has sold a business product and its to cheap looking). If the Carl takes some sort of metal coil, I will check it out.
Jen- you have saved me! I have a pile of coils and my old punch got disassembled by my movers (long story). I adore Carol products and it is in my price range. THANKS!
Jen, if you edit your post I’m curious whether the cut-outs align with the bind-it-all so one could use also these spiral coils with the bind-it-all?
I just checked it out, and it has both plastic and metal coils. Yay! I may have to cave and buy this! (Thanks … a lot …)
I have a bind it all and use it alot, but at a Scrapfest in our area I bought this system. Thanks for the tutoral. I had forgotten how the demo worked. Now I can make a few and I also know where to get more supplies.
Thanks for this.
Where did you get this this chip board? Does it say how thick the insert can be max. It’s made of plastic, but the cutting blade is sharp enough to go thru even thin chipboard? I’m surprised. Will it need replacement blades?