Notebook: Part II (outside).

For notebook covers, I use suede that has been rescued from thrift stores in the form of torn, grimy, stained, and otherwise worn clothing. This piece of sage-green suede came from a jacket.

I am a bit of a romantic -- just a bit -- and so when I've made notebooks in the past, I drew things on the inside of the cover. It's a place that wouldn't show when the journal was finished, so there was a hidden element that made the process extra interesting. If anyone bought one, I planned to send them a picture of what was inside. This time, however, I was especially pleased with the drawing, and decided to make it the outside instead. So: ZEPPELIN! (Drawn with a lovely Staedtler Lumocolor permanent pen; I forget the size.)

The corners are cut off so that, when folded over, they will fit together and not have to be folded or overlapped (a problem with suede, since it's thick, as cover materials go).

The next item of business is gluing the cover together. I used plain chipboard for this one, though I go for heavier (but NOT corrugated) cardboard when I can get it. The pieces should be a bit larger than the pages, such that the cover will stick out further and protect the paper. I don't put any glue on the other side of the boards, mainly as a holdover from not wanting to wreck the drawing behind, but it's also not necessary and gives you more leeway.


Letting the glue dry a bit, until it gets tacky, is a good thing to do before you fold the edges over. You don't have to hold it in place as long, and it's easier to position things how you want them, though there's still flexibility.


Next, one must glue one side of the endpapers (two pieces of fabric, cut the same size as the pages) to the outside of the block of paper. Try and get the glue as even as possible, not using too much, and press well and long before the next step: gluing the other side to the inside of the cover.

I use piece of contrasting suede as a bookmark. Cut it about 1 1/2 times as long as the book, and glue it to the back cover before attaching the endpapers. Having it on the back cover, rather than the spine, makes it lay flat with the pages -- instead of forcing the paper apart.

Again, let the glue dry slightly before pressing things together. Do your best to leave the book alone while pressing it under a weight... I'm planning to make an actual press soon, with rigid boards and wingnuts, but until then I must trust myself not to lift the books off and admire the journal too much while it's drying.

Final step: Photographs!!!




There you have it: a lovely journal that you are not afraid to "waste", because you can make another in a few hours.

Notebook: Part I (inside).

Pocket Moleskines: 12-dollar nuggets of goodness, perfect for taking on voyages. But I can't afford to feed this habit, and I tend to put off writing in them because they're so nice I don't want to "waste" them. So, last November or so, I checked out Michael Shannon's page on making your own faux-Moleskine notebook, and this art has become something of a (benign) habit. Particularly once I realized that you can use ANY kind of paper. My favorite is graph paper, but you can also use...

Staff paper!

Parchment paper! (faux vellum)

Once you've chosen, you take a sheet of paper and -- well, you know the song... YOUUUU MUST RIP IT!

Into four pieces. You then fold each of these in half, leaving you with folios. (Folia?)

I think I'm going to start using a paper guillotine, because matching these can be a pain. Both of those sheets have the fold on the opposite side (away from us, in the picture), so you have left-fuzzy and right-fuzzy folios.
Now we collate them into signatures. For this weight of paper, I used 8 folios/signature, which makes mini-"books" of 16 pages. Just stick one folio inside another, and if you have fuzzy edges, it works best to alternate "left" and "right" folios.

Once you've made 6 signatures, you can put them together into a block. As you can see, that wavy edge-pattern you've seen on some old books is due to the folios being collated after the paper was cut.

Lovely, no?


...Of course, you can't make these stay together until you've punched holes through them, which was the secret catch to this post. Oh man, you'll have to take another ten minutes now. I win!!

Sew anyway...
Then you sew them together. On this one, I forgot that one is meant to punch four holes, rather than three, but it still worked... just won't be as even.


So now you've got your signatures all sewn; you do still need to smear glue on and near the spine, then press cheesecloth (or gauze, like I use) into the glue, to hold everything together nice and firmly. Leave this assembly pressed between a rock and a hard place, and move on to the cover.

And once you have that, it is time to take over the world. And/or make some endpapers. And find something to cover it with. Part II to come soon!

P.S. I made more tarts this morning. <3