Although I’m not totally against being free and messy, I know that the paper was just too thick. I decided to make a smaller journal with less pages and thinner paper. So let’s go through this little tutorial of creating a journal using a sewing machine to bind your pages. I apologize in advance for the wonky photo coloring – I didn’t have proper lighting! So first thing I did was test my sewing machine to find out how many papers I could comfortably sew. I cut my papers to size and simply sewed the folded papers into the center of the liner paper, just a bit larger in size. This is probably the easiest binding one can ever do! I did remember to sew in reverse on the top and bottom to make sure the thread doesn’t unravel. I also purposely left long endings so I could glue them into the lining. When sewing paper, you just have to do a lot of tests and get your stitch length longer, so you don’t just end up cutting your paper.

To add a bit of design, I decided to sew along all four corners of my liner paper as well. Of course, you have to do this before you sew your signature of paper in. Pretty simple, straight sewing that I can sort of do. Even though it’s a bit wobbly-lined, I’m okay with it .

Next step is to glue the piece to your cover material. I am using leather here, just gluing the ends of the sewing and the whole liner paper with PVA glue.

After it dries, I just cut it out by hand, leaving a flap on the right to wrap around for closure.

For my wraparound closure, I braided some ribbon and twine together, attaching a big button to the end. I really love the ribbons mixed with other string, giving a really rustic look.

I punched two holes into the flap and pulled my braided closure into it.

One side is knotted twice to keep it secure, then wrapping around twice, the button helps to hold it closed securely. Pretty nifty!

There you have it, another little journal for you thoughts, doodles and life experiences. How cool is that?!

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. Of course, you can also check out my Etsy shop where I list the extra journals I’ve created for sale. I do hope they find good homes, because I can’t stop making them! Thanks for sticking around for this incredibly long post…until tomorrow my lovelies. Ciao ciao!

Otherwise, my creative workspace is filled with piles. Partial projects to be worked on, books and sketches here and there…

…but more interesting is some progress on these paintings I’ve had lying around.

I’ve posted previously about how I got stuck and wasn’t able to move forward with them. Letting it all stew in the back of my mind until I was ready. I realized that I wanted to add some words and since this all came out of the Italian book of lucky numbers, I added in little phrases in italiano. Hopefully I didn’t make a bunch of mistakes, since I’m not a native speaker and still have so much to learn. It’s funny how you can communicate in a foreign country perfectly fine, but still make a million grammatical mistakes

So I’ve always disliked my handwriting, very chicken-scratchy fitting the stereotype that math majors have illegible handwriting. Only mine doesn’t actually look cool illegible, like you see in mathematical proofs or mad scientist papers, it’s just really inconsistent and plain messy. It’s something people have always been surprised by because they assume a girl must have really cute neat handwriting. Oh, the woes of societal misconceptions! I’ve certainly tried to work on my penmanship and can probably do something decent here and there, but that’s with much effort. My natural handwriting is still crazy messy. I’ve realized like with everything else it just takes practice and learning. You choose the handwriting style you want to use for the particular purpose and go for it. For these paintings, I wrote really slowly and embraced even the mistakes. I think it fits with the theme of how we try to control and bend luck to our will, yet at the same time it seems to just happen by chance…flowing out in whatever which way…

I’m going to keep working on these today and see where it all takes me. Fun fun…

1. Cut you paper to size and fold to create signatures.

2. Cut your cover material.

3. Pre-punch holes in your cover and signatures of paper.

4. Finally, bind your book together.  In this case it’s sewing the signatures into the leather cover.

The variation I put into this particular journal was in the sewing of the binding…adding buttons for decoration. I really like this look and didn’t want to create the wrap around closure that would interfere with the nice button decoration. Instead I’m going to look for a magnetic closure and use that instead. I’m quite happy with this slightly larger size, about 6 inches square. Even though the leather cover is soft and floppy, it doesn’t bother me at all.

So now I have these stack of journals with no idea what I will use them for. I made them without reason, just experiments to see what would be possible with the leather. I decided it was time to make a bigger journal that I would actually use to hold a whole bunch of old artwork and looseleaf pages. I saw Teesha Moore’s Fabric Journal Tutorial Video and wondered if I could do the same thing with leather! So I tried…but soon realized some of the leather I have is way too thick to make those little pillows Teesha described, not to mention sewing leather is pretty difficult in itself.

You can see above my first attempts where I pre-punch holes in order to sew the leather pieces together. I skipped filling the pillows in with fluffy stuff, but in the end they don’t look cute like Teesha’s fabric ones with rolled up edges. It’s also scary to think how much hole punching I’ll have to do to put the whole cover together…eek! I decided to go for the simplest version possible, taking the patchwork idea of piecing together material to create journal covers. Here’s my first two pieces sewn together, which really took a toll on my hands. It’s hard work punching the holes and pulling tightly to get the leather bound together. However, I really like the results…so I’m going to keep at it and see if I can piece together enough to make a big journal. Wish me luck…

After finishing some freelance work, I continued to make my little black books, testing various methods of binding the paper to the leather covers. I was actually quite surprised that the glued binding works. You can see below that the single pages fan out nicely and the glue dried into a flexible state. I suppose only after years it might start cracking apart? Of course, I didn’t purposefully try to rip pages out, so not sure what will happen with use.

Since I didn’t use any padding between my clamp and the book, you can see there are some marks and glue on it. I decided to cover that part up as I had to bind the paper to the leather cover anyway. I just cut out some circles and used them to anchor the paper onto the leather with some glue. The circle shape is actually a nice detail and I was thinking it would be nice to use many different shapes or flourishes on these inner binding pages.

After I finished this little book, it seems like a pretty standard method, pages fanning out.  Again, the glue seems to have dried flexible at this time, but I still feel like after a while it would start to crack or if I pushed down the pages to write. Am I just being paranoid? Wondering if anyone has had experience with glue binding?

The next little black book I made has multiple signatures sewn together. This allows for many more pages, but binding it all to the leather cover pretty much went the same route. I just cut out some decorative paper and glued it all together. Although, you can see the decorative paper on the back is shorter…not sure what I was thinking there. I knew it was shorter, but just went with it…zoning out?!

Since I had glued decorated paper behind the binding part already, this doesn’t look as clean from the side. There’s also an element of attaching just the right amount of cover material so you can close the book with perfect edges, but still open all the way flat. The decorative paper was definitely getting wrinkly in certain parts. It seems that this method is similar to the glue method, just with lots more pages.

Finally, I made a super mini book with the paper left over. This time I decided to sew the signatures directly into the leather cover instead of relying on glue to hold it all together. I realized that this works better with fatter signatures because your holes do have to be a certain space apart to not completely rip through the leather.

The sewing isn’t really sewing – more like tying each signature through the two holes, so you see the embroidery thread on the outside binding and tying a few knots inside to secure.

I used an old earring for the bead part and realized I could put one bead on the end to catch the eyelet, so the string doesn’t go through. Then the other end of the string has a bead so you can secure the book after wrapping around multiple times.  This adds a really pretty detail to the book, not to mention reuse of random jewelry items I have. I seem to always lose one earring, so I have a bunch lying around for use.

I noticed that this type of binding really works well with the leather. Each signature is secure, but it’s all very flexible and easy to smash open the paper for whatever doodling or writing. I suppose that is why you see so many of these journals in touristy Italian bookshops!

I know there must be a cooler way to bind these individual signatures to the leather though. Stuff for sale seems to look more complicated anyway. I really think I’ll have to get some bookbinding sewing charts, because thinking about figuring out a cool stitching method myself just makes my head hurt!

Overall, I am really satisfied with my little black books. Even with the little imperfections, stains of glue or wiggly edges…they look super cute and are totally unique. I think the addition of decorative paper inserts and the beads really add a nice accent to the stark black leather. I think my favorite is the smallest one – not sure if the size is winning me over – but I think it’s the exposed stitching and flexible binding. What do you think? Let me know if you have any ideas or variations. I’m already going to try a concertina type book after watching how Marion from A Piece of Craft, made her heart minibook shown on prima’s ustream video. Especially for the tiny books that seem sized for gnome hands instead of human hands, they seem perfect for binding a little art book or something meant to look at rather than for actual use. Well, I hope you enjoyed following along my bookbinding adventure and hope you have a great weekend. Ciao ciao lovelies!

Since I wanted to try more methods of binding the pages together, I cut some more paper, but this time using regular Fabriano drawing paper, creating 4 page signatures. Signatures are just sheets of paper folded in half that will be bound together to form your entire book. In this case, I’m not being very technical about it, like checking the grain of the paper – too lazy! All the rules of bookbinding that you learn have a really good reason to be a rule…it really does matter in the end. However, it all just depends how picky you are about your book and what you will be using it for. I’m pretty flexible because it just depends what I feel like doing at the moment – I skip steps when I get impatient or when I feel like the precision won’t be worth it for the project.

However, one thing I never skip is the pre-punching of holes. Otherwise, you aren’t exactly going to be able to sew the signatures together. It’s sort of a tedious process that is super boring, especially if you have a lot of signatures…but it makes the next step of sewing a lot smoother.

I tried sewing one little book of signatures together, but sort of messed up somewhere in the process – you can see the line of thread on the outside binding below. No worries since it’ll be covered up in this project. After going through the process of sewing it, I realized I had the same problem of not knowing how to attach it to the leather cover – oif!

My hands got really tired from the sewing and poking, so I’m going to continue tomorrow. I have more paper for an even smaller book that I’ll try to sew straight into the leather cover, but I’ll have to finish these first two. Check back in for the results tomorrow…hopefully one method or another will work properly. In other updates…I realized that I’ve been drawing a bird a day for 5 weeks now! I’m proud of myself for keeping to the routine and I like how a daily thing, even if it’s just 5 minutes, adds up to so much before you even know it. Who doesn’t want to have stuff done without realizing? Let’s see, otherwise I’m just doodling in my art journal…realizing drawing a million circles can be super tiring…and feeling like I have no time again because suddenly dinnertime is here.  Yikes…gotta go!

Looks pretty cute, huh? I just folded up the scraps of paper I had, cut the leather to size and used eyelets to attach the side piece of leather for closure. The round bead is glass from Murano attached to a black leather cord…sort of the traditional system of wrapping around the booklet many times and slipping the bead in place to keep the whole thing closed. A cute little 8x8cm book, perfect to keep in the car for notes or in your purse perhaps? I’m quite happy with the results and how neat it looks. I suppose all miniature items just look cool! So what’s the problem with all this? Well, I haven’t actually attached the pages to the leather yet. I’m not sure if glue is strong enough, but sewing would be too close for all those pages as I want them single, not in bunches. I fooled ya, didn’t I? It’s totally unfinished…

I was chuckling a bit to myself about the unfinished book and how I could still take the photo that looked final. I found out that some projects you see published in crafty books are sometimes unfinished as well, so that’s why I was chuckling. Or at least sometimes they don’t finish projects completely because they only need the parts essential for photography. Pretty tricky, huh? Well, if anyone knows of a good method to attach the paper to the leather that would be nice. I want something sturdy that enables me to keep the pages single sheets folded, rather than bunched together as signatures. Now I’m going to scour the web and see if I can find a good tutorial or combine techniques that would work for this project…

Although I want to dive in and clean madly, I know it usually results in spreading everything around the room and not finishing! So I’m trying to do it one drawer at a time…one thing at a time, like paper!  I confess that I am a paper hoarder, always thinking I’m going to do something cool with this particular special paper, but end up hoarding it forever because I can’t bare to cut it. Tsk tsk. I’m collecting up all my paper stacks and rolls and looking for a place that is in view, so I will be more drawn to making the cut! Along the way I’ve been finding a lot of paper scraps for the recycling bin. Some of the papers are nice and thick, even if not blank – so inspiration struck and I decided to make a scrappy journal.  I gathered up old magazines, catalogues, packing materials, scrap watercolor paper, test prints and btw the latest issue of Somerset Studio has artists papers in it, too. Anything with a bit of thickness will do nicely for a mixed media art journal because you cover up with paint anyway.

In the end, my recycled scrappy journal actually turned out really cool looking!  I’m happy with the results and feeling that using scrap materials provides more inspiration and is less intimidating to dig into. The super long cotton ribbon is there so I can keep changing the binding tightness if things get too thick. Now I can go paint this up and work on a stack of paintings I have in progress.  I tend to forget about things because I’m already on to the next thing – eek!

Before I go offline, I also wanted to share my drawing a day on Flickr, little birdies with style! I added a beanie hat one today and hope to keep this up because it’s fun to create little characters that have such different personalities suggested by changing a few lines here or a hat there! Illustration is cool. Our family just got a birdhouse set up, so I’m currently very amused watching the birdies eat our bread crumbs. Okay, now I’m off…

Since I have no purpose for the journals I made I thought I would give them away to my lovely blog readers.  Anyone need a journal sketchbook for some art making?  I used materials I have lying around the house, so there might be wear and tear on the corners, but otherwise all blank pages ready for your creativity.  Check out my post yesterday for more pictures and details. There are two up for grabs…I’ll send them anywhere in the world.

Just comment below saying which one you want.  Or if either one is okay just say that and you’ll be put in both groups for the random drawing next week.  Enjoy!

GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED

First, I made this shabby chic journal, pattern paper from scrapbooking to make the covers with some heavier weight cream colored paper inside.  I stitched this page by page, so every page could lay out flat completely.  However, using embroidery thread and a loose hand, it became really loose as you can see in the photo and I don’t think the decorative element shows with such soft thread.  Inside I also printed a titled but made a mistake with the term “create fearlessly” as I meant it to go on the last page, oops!  Well, the rest of the pages are blank, so maybe it’ll provide funky inspiration regardless!

The second journal also has similar pattern paper covers and on second thought I will try to find some thicker type of board for covers.  This one has cream paper as well, but regular copy paper weight with 8 signatures, so lots of pages for sketching and such.  I also used natural fiber linen string, which I think looks much better…more structure and stitching design showing in the binding.  However, I also had tension issues with this as well, some places looser, some places tighter!

So now I am going to try and make a sort of remains of the day type of journal from some cardboard covers and random papers I have lying around.  Better bound than spread all over my room definitely.  Not sure what to do with these journals though…I already have too many started and doodled in…eek!