If you haven’t already checked it out, please visit my “Let’s Make A Journal” post where I go through my tutorial of how to make a journal and why I make them. Suffice to say, my creative workspace is full of papers, leather and bits and bobs from bookmaking. I would really appreciate your thoughts and feel free to ask questions about bookmaking as well. No surprise that I woke up today with the urge to make another journal. I immediately started working the grungy envelopes you saw at the end of yesterday’s post.
You might notice that this journal looks done, but it’s actually not sewn together yet! I’m still playing with the pages and how to stitch it together, but decided to prepare the rest of it. I really love the use of braided ribbons for the wraparound closure. I was tinkering a bit with snap closures, but have no idea how to use them…you know the extra buttons you get with clothing but never use? The ribbon gives it a softer look that I like though.
Anyway, the inspiration for this journal came from the idea of a mini travel notebook where you could write into, but also have a spot to collect stuff. The envelopes will allow you to keep little bits and pieces of your journey. Ticket stubs, pretty leaves, who knows! I’m making this as a gift and really excited to get it done and sent off.
Besides making journals left and right, I’ve also been doing my daily sketching and posting on Flickr. It’s really nice to have the routine, no matter how small it might be. Lots of little steps still get you moving forward, I say! Today I have a lot of digital work to be completed, so off I go into digital computer designer land. Until tomorrow my lovely readers. BTW, have I told you how much I appreciate your time in visiting and commenting on my blog? Grazie! I feel like such a lucky girl! 🙂
Since I can think of nothing else but bookbinding today, I thought it was about time I wrote a tutorial and explanation of how I make my journals and sketchbooks and even more importantly – why!? I’ve always been in awe of the fine art of bookmaking, but really I started making journals for myself to use. It was simply easier to fold up a bunch of papers I had lying around and start journaling. The ability to customize the size, the papers and add in little details made my journals even more special to me as well. However, I soon fell in love with the bookmaking process itself. I kept making journals and even though I work in more than a handful of journals at the same time, I quickly produced more than I could ever use.
Sometimes I’m inspired to create when seeing a cool book design or stitching method. Other times I come across an interesting material that I want to test out as a journal cover. However, I also just like the process and enjoy going through the motions of transforming paper and raw materials into a functional and beautiful creation. It’s a great feeling that drives me onward when it comes to bookmaking. For some reason, it’s amazingly easy for me to bind a book even when I’m tired or don’t feel like doing much. Perhaps it’s muscle memory in my hands, just creating with intuition…
I most often use leather for my journal covers and that is because I acquire remainder stock from local production companies here in Tuscany, Italy. These are sample pieces and leftovers that would have been tossed in the dump or destroyed. I’m all for saving the material from a short life and turning them into little journals for all of us to enjoy. I’ve been sending them to friends and family as well – they really make great gifts! I used to buy journals to give to people, because I’ve always loved the idea of journaling. It’s a place to dump down your thoughts and express your emotions…or even just write your grocery list into. I feel like it’s a necessity and everyone should have a little notebook and pen in their pocket, purse, car…
So let’s get right into the basics of making your very own journal! Let me show you the general process, step-by-step before we delve into more details and some fancy stuff. To begin with, you must choose some type of material for your cover and inside pages. It can be as simple as some heavy cardstock for the cover and white copy paper for the inside. Or you can try some chipboard, cardboard, fabric or leather as I often default to using. For flimsier materials such as fabric and leather, it’s good to glue in some liner paper. In fact, you might want to glue some pretty decorative paper to cover raw materials or even paint over cardboard to make it look a bit nicer.
In my example, I chose to use a piece of black leather with silver metallic lines. It’s pretty thin, so I glued black cardstock on the inside to give it some strength. I pretty much eyeball my measurements because I can’t cut straight for the life of me and detailed measurements are a bore 🙂 I just take a rough measurement of my paper size, giving a bit of room for the binding depending how many pages I want to include. You’ll notice that I cut a bit more leather to create a flap on the right…we’ll see what that is for later. This works for materials that can easily wrap around the book.
You will notice that I folded my inside papers and grouped them together. Each group of papers is called a signature. It’s basically papers folded in half that you will be attaching to your cover in some way. I use a plastic bone folder to help me crease all the papers nicely. It’s a great tool once you get into bookmaking, otherwise your fingers will be sore…trust me on that.
Once you have your cover and papers ready, it is pivotal to prepunch all your holes before stitching. It just makes the process of sewing a lot easier and does force you to do a little planning in terms of spacing and how you will be sewing it all together. The binding method I chose to do is super simple and all you need are two holes in each signature. You’ll see that I punched 2 corresponding holes for each signature in the cover as well. Now it’s time to sew!
I use embroidery thread and a big needle to sew my books together. You can buy waxed thread to prevent knotting up and pretty much use anything that you can string through easily. I’ve used various kinds of string and ribbon as well…it’s a bit up to your taste. I say use whatever you have available.
First step is to stick the needle through the bottom hole from the inside of your signature. Stick it through all the papers and the cover to the outside.
Then you pull the thread under and over the outside edge of your journal to tie a knot with the tail end of your starting point. It’s like you just looped the bottom part of your journal up. Remember when tying your knots to make them as tight as you possibly can without ripping through your papers. Leave a little tail here, so that you will be able to tie another knot at a later step.
With your knot secure, you bring the thread up to the top hole and stick it through your papers and cover to the outside.
Then you bring it up and over the top of your journal, going back into the same top hole again.
You’ll end up on the outside of your journal, creating that loop around the top of your journal to secure the signature nicely to your cover. Make sure that your thread is tight and nothing is loosely hanging around.
From here you bring your thread down and stick it into the bottom hole. You are going into the journal and ending up in your start position, inside the signature.
Here you are in the original bottom hole, where you started to begin with!
That’s it! You are done after making sure the thread is tight and tying a knot with the starting tail of thread you’ve left there. Then you can snip the threads to an even measure and tah-dah! One signature of paper securely sewn to your cover.
You will notice that with this simple stitch, you see the thread all along the spine of your journal on the outside and inside.
You basically repeat the steps above for sewing in all your signatures of paper…one by one. This stitching method is easy because you can tackle one signature at a time, making sure the thread is tight and secure. Note that you need about double the height of your journal in thread for each signature.
After sewing all your signatures into the cover, you are done. You’ve hand-bound a journal all by yourself! Of course, if you used a soft material like leather in my example here… you can allow for a wrap around flap. I usually do this because it’s a nice way to close up your journals, especially if you throw them in your purse. A closed journal means less smashed up papers on the inside. Creating a closure is also really simple. My go-to-method is to punch two holes in the flap.
Then I used a long strip of the same leather material, braided ribbon or rope to string through the two holes as you see in the photo.
Tie a knot or two on one end so that it holds in place, then wrap the material around a few times, slipping the end securely in place. That’s it for the wraparound closure. Simple, but effective.
I’ve created countless journals following this basic bookbinding process. In fact, I often prepare multiple covers and signatures, so that I can sew a whole bunch of books together at once.
From the basic process, you can vary up certain elements to create a variety of journal styles. I mostly use leather covers, but I’ve also used grungy cardboard and paper covered chipboard as well. You can also experiment with different papers inside and changing up the number of signatures as well as the number of pages per signature. It really depends on the thickness of the paper you use…the idea is make sure each signature is strong enough to withhold whatever stitching you will be doing. You don’t want your thread to rip through your paper – for example, if you want to use only one sheet of paper per signature. In that case it might actually be better to using a sewing machine or make sure you use extremely thick paper that can withstand the stitching without tearing. Once you try making a book or two, you’ll find there are so many possibilities. Experiment with the cover material, liner papers, signature papers and stitching methods.
My grungy envelopes above are ready for another experiment in bookbinding. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a few pockets in your travel journal to collect ephemera? You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see what I’m up to. I hope you’ve learned a bit from my simple tutorial in bookbinding and really wish you would give it a try sometime.
This week has flown by and suddenly it’s Friday and I haven’t accomplished as much artwork as I would have liked to. Oh well, TGIF nevertheless! This brings me to something I’ve been contemplating all this week – learning to just let it go. I’m talking about a real honest evaluation of the projects you are involved with. We all know there are only 24 hours in a day and there will always be something on the list of to do’s. We can’t do it all, but we often attempt to do so anyway.
I say, don’t be afraid or feel bad to simply abandon a project. It’s over…and it’s perfectly okay. Life goes on! I’m no longer going to beat myself up for not finishing a few in progress paintings. I can just paint over them and start fresh.
Maybe a new routine isn’t working out so well for you. I say, be fearless and try something else. I’m no longer doing daily birds, but opened it up to just simple daily sketches.
Maybe you have a super special project and you refuse to let it be finished because of a few details? I say, push your perfectonism aside and call it done! Learn to let go and just relax. Our lives should be fun and happy…so create that environment for yourself. Oh and don’t forget to have a beer. I’ve had my liter already and feeling pretty good…
Happy Thursday to everyone! Just wanted to give you a peek at my creative workspace today…
I’ve been trying to clean up my room, but as I go through stuff I get ideas and start creating. I also seem to create a mess, so in the end there really hasn’t been a lot of clean-up either way. Oh well! Blame it on the ice coffees I can’t seem to stop myself from having. Maybe that’s where the “high” comes from 🙂
I have been making little journals to send to friends and even though I still can’t cut straight for the life of me, they are so darn cute anyway. Something about the smaller size perhaps? These babies are around 11 cm square sized, itty bitty but still enough space to work on.
Since I’ve rediscovered my leather stash, I’m really into making journals right this moment and experimenting with different ways to create a closure…that’s always the most challenging part for me.
Otherwise, I really need to finish up another tissue paper roll minibook I created, house shaped this time! I’m going to put pictures of my family with a funny quote attached. You can see the roof of the houses lift up to reveal the tag portion. It’s going to be hilarious because my grandma-in-law says the funniest things…
I also saw a great video profile of artist Jonas Gerard today and since I’ve been prepping a tiny booklet with gesso – seemingly forever – stalling I suppose – I feel it’s time to start with my mini abstracts. It’s going to be a bit of creative play painting time with extremely loud music…but in miniature form for cuteness…LOL!
Have you heard of The Diary Project? It’s a project getting a bunch of artists together to create a dated diary with their artwork. I think it’s a great opportunity to get your artwork out there in front of people’s eyes, so I signed up to design a page. Since it’s all black and white I decided to do a line drawing, here’s my test print out…
I happen to draw little elf-like girls a lot, they are very similar but I never really think of them as the same one. No character development here! Just a cutie to make you smile and be happy. I love the idea of having an illustrated diary where each page is filled by a different artist. Talk about inspiration galore as you go through each day…pretty cool idea and just wanted to share with you all. Maybe you’ll want to sign up for a page as well?!
This morning started as a rainy, gloomy day so my art journal page began with a little girl under the clouds. She wasn’t so happy about it all. The weather so drastically affects my mood, it has a bit too much control over me I think! However, as lunchtime rolled around the skies cleared and it was full-on summer sunshine. So I had to change her to a happy girl because the sun was arriving. The sun is actually one of the printable graphics I posted previously. The spread started as a bunch of square papers pasted into my journal. I added paint in various colors and rubbed them all over, then drew my little illustration, adding white paint and outlining the drawing again. Pretty simple, but it creates a nice blocky texture in the background.
So an update on the zine idea I wrote about on last week’s art journaling post…I was so inspired after reading and learning about the creative process of ihanna’s Mettazine! I’ve always been in love with zines like Craft Leftovers and even online mags like ArtTrader – there are so many great ones out there. With the encouragement of my lovely readers I jumped on the idea of creating one myself. I like the idea of sharing my point of view on a topic, like discussing with friends about something I’m passionate about. I also love the idea of creating a fun little booklet to mail out. With handmade touches and sort of underground feel to it – like the days of handing out revolutionary ideas on the down low 🙂 LOL! I started typing my ideas out and before I knew it, I had written a full 6 pages of text! Here’s a peek at my stream of consciousness…
I’ve never thought of myself as a writer, but I suppose I do become a chatterbox when I get comfortable. No longer the little meek girl you might suppose me to be. Maybe I’ve gone a bit overboard though because it looks like a lot to read. However, I’ll be spicing it up with some interactivity and doodles. Exciting stuff and I can’t wait to keep working on it and really put it together. I want to find a way to bind it as a little book since I love bookbinding as well. Those are just a few of the ideas running in my mind…weee!!!
I just discovered this lovely song and music video, “Crayola Doesn’t Make A Color For Your Eyes” by Kristin Andreassen and totally loving it. A great inspirational start for my Monday morning!
I really love the kids in the video – happy times, grooving to the beat and doodling with crayons. What could be more fun? But if you listen to the lyrics, it’s also such a sweet love song. Aweee…super cute lovey-dovey, the sentiment she is expressing! I was inspired to play a bit with drawing eyes and coloring them. Fun fun…
In the past few weeks, I’ve noticed more and more often the use of corrugated cardboard in scrapbook layouts and crafting in general. I’m sure it’s always been there, but I saw Marion from A Piece of Craft in a video using it for a layout and also cutting out flowers with it…combining the rough look with really glitzy pretty stuff as well. Then I saw episode 144 of Paperclipping that totally encouraged mixing styles, including an example of corrugated cardboard use – thus adding it into my creative vocabulary. When I saw a cardboard box that had a thicker double layer structure I was literally pushed into starting a new project – immediately!
I used some inspiration from many of the fabulous bookmakers out there and added some leather strips to my cardboard book covers, sewing up the book quickly and roughly. You can tell it’s a bit roughly done – I didn’t measure anything because I was just entranced in making what was in my mind – a real thing.
I’m really surprised how nicely it came together with little planning and have realized that over time I am liking the grungy look more and more. I suppose it comes a bit naturally if you start to use more recycled materials. For example, I never buy chipboard or bookboard…I just use cardboard, food boxes, backing of notepads, etc. My task now is to embellishment this eclectic book in a fashion that contrasts with the rough and tough look it currently has. Pretty bright flowers perhaps? White lace? One thing I noticed was the ripping of the cardboard to expose the inner textured part results in a lot of linting…I’m not sure if I did something wrong or if I have to spray fixative on it. If anyone has tips, please let me know!
Another Thursday and another peek into my creative workspace. Here are some photos of all the little projects I have going on…little experiments, prototypes and works in progress. I am realizing that it’s a lot more fun to always have many projects going on at the same time. You can jump to whatever sparks the most inspiration and in that way you are really enjoying the creative process so much more than grudgingly having to finish xyz. I suppose I can understand how painters might work on many different pieces hanging around their studio. Now I just need some more space to store everything!
After my vacation from last week, I finally finished up the two little bookbinding experiments you see above. The purple one is covered with patterned paper, but I didn’t feel it was thick or strong enough. The black one is covered with leather and an illustrated canvas panel of my bike illustration. I definitely like the thicker leather cover, but the inside papers aren’t that thick making it less stable. Both are accordion style books, but the way I glued them together doesn’t really make it usable on both sides. I guess it’s like Goldilocks and I have to find just the right one, the right combination that will work the best. More experimentation I suppose…
In my bookbinding adventures, I also like to try new techniques and recently learned about the Jacob’s Ladder. It’s that flip flop accordion style booklet that is fun to play with and you’ve probably seen it before. I was so surprised to learn it’s quite easy to construct, even if I still don’t understand how it really works 🙂 I tried to make a sample, but tried with string so that there is less coverage on the panels. I soon realized why people recommend ribbon – because it’s flat and can sandwich between the boards much easier. You can see mine gets a bit bent up and twisted at times…another lesson learned.
On to another little project I am working – painting up my tissue paper rolls for minibook making. It gets really messy with the inks and paints and I also have to let everything dry, but I’m looking forward to putting it all together.
Finally, you can see the 3 little canvases that keep morphing in the photo above. I keep painting over them and can’t decide what it is I will do. More mulling time needed – I guess you can call it the art marination process. So those are the photo peeks of all the little projects spread throughout my creative workspace. A little here, a little there. It keeps me busy and keeps the creativity fresh, jumping from one task to another – I think so anyway! It’s definitely more fun, although I suppose there is probably a scientific limit to how many ongoing threads of thought a person can have at one time. Hmm…well, hope you enjoyed checking out my photos!
Happy Wednesday to everyone! Today I was playing around with drawing a sun for the cover of a mini scrapbook project and ended up with a bunch of versions.
I think that it’s always a good creative exercise to do multiple versions of something. It’s my way of experimenting with multiple options and seeing how little changes effect the end result.
Either way it’s just fun! I always end up with something quite different from my original idea as well. It’s a great way to play-storm… like brainstorm you know? Of course, now I really can’t decide which one I like the best. Perhaps I can combine them in some way? It seems I am neverbored of the drawing suns. I’ve noticed that I morph it into a flower oftentimes. Are they suns or flowers?
Whether they be suns or flowers or suns dressed up as flowers or vice versa – I hope you can use them in your personal crafting projects. Feel free to download the PDF above with all the variations and let me know what you think. Hopefully I can share my little book project with you as well… ciao ciao for now.
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