Larger pages in your A6 organiser

I think I might have said this before, but I will repeat myself anyway! From an early age maps have always fascinated me. I think I could read a map better than I could read a book. I could spend hours looking at maps, trying to picture the place from just the map symbols that I had learnt at school.

These days of course we just go in to Google Maps or Google Street View and we can see exactly what somewhere looks like! Cheating I know, but I use these mapping tools regularly too.

Although I'm a big fan of mobile internet connected devices, I still like to have a printed map or a tube map of places I'm visiting. Ask anyone who has been anywhere with me and they will confirm I have a very good sense of direction without a map or GPS! Just a sixth sense I suppose.

Now going to A6 size as I've done recently, naturally I wanted some maps in my organiser. So why not create the inserts myself.

They could be A6 in size, no complication there, just print them and pop them in. But we can also do A5 pages and fit them in to an A6, here is how.

Print your map or insert (what ever it is) on A5 size paper, just make sure the left hand margin is about 1.2 cm to allow for the holes to be punched. Then fold the page in half, then take the top part of the folded paper and fold it back to the right hand edge. This forms what I call a 'Z fold' or 'S fold' depending which side you view it from.

I've done this with quite a few pages, also in A5 organisers where you want an A4 page in your A5. It works just the same.

So A5 works fine in A6. But what if you do not want to reduce your printed page down to A5 or A6, what if you want to leave it as an A4 page? Yes you can fit an A4 page in to your A6 organiser. Here is how we do that.

So again print out your page in Landscape A4 format, leaving a margin of at least 1.2 cm on the left side for the rings.

The next thing to do once you have your printed A4 sheet is to mark in pencil or erasable ink the following dimensions.

A line 148 mm from the top edge going the full width of your page, another line 105 mm from the left hand edge. We are basically setting up the limits of our A6 page. We then add another line half way between the line to create another fold line (fold 4).

So you should end up with something that looks like this. Obviously you don't need to mark the printed side, just some guide lines on the reverse side will be fine.

Now it is time to fold your page

With the page now face up, fold up the thin strip at the bottom over the full width of the page.

Then turn down the lower left hand corner so that the rings will not be impeded.

Then fold the right hand side of the page to the left folding on the 105 mm line.

Then fold it back again to the edge.

Then punch your page and it is ready to go in to your organiser.

And yes I've done this before with A3 pages in an A5 organiser, A2 in A4 should work too!

It doesn't have to be maps, any A4 page that you do not wish to reduce in size will work.

You can find out more about A6 format in this recent post.