#blank journal

[lolavalolaart]

handmade notebook with pink sheets

[nighthawkpress]

Shrek-themed blank journal!

OKAY SO.

my choir director loves "Shrek" to the point it's become an inside joke, so in honor of her master's degree graduation I made her a shitpost in physical form, which I will present to her this evening at the chorus end-of-year potluck :D

this originally started life as "oh maybe I should make [choir director] a thing, I'll make her a Coptic journal with a cardstock cover with some art on it, maybe I'll laminate it". and then I kept "yes, and"-ing myself. and this happened.

details!

this is my first square back Bradel bind! paper is Church Paper short grain cream paper with the 5mm dot grid from print-graph-paper.com. I sewed the text block with a French stitch. also my first time doing an elastic band closure and a pen loop! endpapers are something I found locally, stamped with a homemade wooden stamp using a StazOn brown solvent ink pad. back pocket is cardstock from the office supply store. title page & back pocket drawing were done in Procreate; font is Special Elite. book cloth is homemade Heat n Bond with generic-ass tissue paper as the backing.

some notes!

this was definitely the best text block I've sewn yet. the French link stitch may have helped but I'd like to think I'm getting better at sewing, generally.

I did a moleskine-style elastic loop to hold the thing closed and figured out how to include a pen holder. I had to kind of hack getting the thing attached, but I think it'll hold up long term.

my choir director loves vintage 80s clothes and has carefully curated her wardrobe in that direction, with a lot of cool 80s button-down shirts, so obviously I went out and found some actual deadstock fabric from the 80s and made book cloth out of it. because of who I am as a person. which is to say someone who cannot not escalate shit to the next level, given the opportunity to do so.

it's important when gifting someone a blank journal that they can immediately tell you actually made it instead of just buying it in the store. it helps you bank brownie points for later. also it gives you the ability to troll them to unprecedented levels heretofore unrealized by god or man.

I wanted to find a rubber stamp of an onion for the endpapers but I couldn't find anything locally and didn't want to buy lino tools just for this project because my god have you seen my craft room, and everything online was boring and expensive and would take forever to get to me. so at 11 PM on thursday night, in a fit of rage, I channeled the spirit of my theater tech child-in-law and was like "oh my god I can make this my goddamn self", went to the basement, dug up a beginner's carving kit from the outer ring, lower strata of my crafting area, and carved an onion stamp, powered by spite and fury at capitalism

the foredges of the case are reinforced with commercial book cloth that was actually made in this century, because as it turns out 40 year old fabric gets fragile after a while and it cracked at the bend around the front cover. originally i patched it with moar 80s book cloth but it looked janky and didn't stick well, so i went with the black cloth along the edges. I think it looks pretty good, actually

alsooooo the guillotine I thrifted a while back I think needs its blade sharpened, or a new blade, whichever one, because it did skew the text block a bit and caused a hilarious animated effect with the dots if you flip through the book lol. you cannot see it in this picture but just trust me bro

the thing was done by last night at 8 PM except for the pocket, which wasn't going to take long and which was originally just going to be plain, unadorned cardstock. and then I was like "you know what would be funny"

obviously i had to spend the time i would have been making the pocket drawing the fairy godmother instead and then make the pocket after that. do not worry about what time i went to bed. shhhh

(pro tip if you print out something on cardstock using a laser printer it is very likely to smudge. spray fixative is the solution but it does mean you have to maybe sit the book outside on your front porch at zero dark thirty with random shit holding it open so the off-gassing can happen before you put it under weights for the night so it can get nice and flat. maybe.)

miraculously, the next morning i pulled the thing out from under the weights and it was a book. who knew! the 4 color pen is a new thing but reminds me of being a kid in the 80s so I included it just for fun.

I think it's really important to mention that this potluck is also Shrek-themed, so i was just doing my part to contribute.

in conclusion, fuck the sun

this was my favorite bind I've done so far! I think I'm starting to get the hang of sewing so that my text block doesn't slide apart before I can glue it, as well as dealing with the various materials in such a way I don't get glue all over everything, or have the hinge gaps too wide, or whatever. I mean I will definitely make those mistakes in the future :P but it's nice to start getting the feel of things in my muscle memory, if that makes sense. this was a fun bind and I'm very pleased with the result, even with all its flaws :)

[babyblankyerror]

Welp. There you go. I have had this little journal since 2019, only wrote on it around a year later and now it is finally full to the end.

It's a junk journal, full of thoughts, collages, lyrics and poems. It has blood and tears and maybe a little sweat, im not sure about the sweat but there is definitely of the other stuff. Oh and a dead moth. But I didnt kill the moth. I like moths.

Hopefully the next journal will be a happier one, less downs and down and up and down. Hopefully it will be more insightful, constant, heck- I'll take inspirational if I'm hoping. I tried really hard to end it on a good note but... I couldn't. It started with a hopeless page and ends with one all the same... but I guess that's just how it goes.

Here's to another year to me and an end to you, old friend. Thanks for listening to me when no one would.

[kansouamejunking]

[jinkieswouldyoulookatthis]

Three Men of Letters inspired Handbound journals available For Sale…

CuriousVolume - Etsy

Shop items by CuriousVolume.

Only available within the USA (sorry friends in the rest of the world, shipping internationally is too expensive to be worth it currently☹️)

Genuine leather spines, cloth covered hardbacks, 100 pgs of heavy smooth paper that takes ink like a dream and resists bleed through.

Heat transfer vinyl Aquarian star emblems on the covers.

Handmade by yours truly. More to come.

[shinonart]

The notebooks are finally available! Click here for more details!

It was a bit of a wait but it was so worth it! I love how both Waters of Orion and Lux Aeterna fit the covers perferctly.

The tiger has blank pages and the lion has dotted ones. I tested the paper with some commonly pens and pencils. Only alcoholic and adhesive based markers bleed through.

I’m definitely keeping one of each for myself haha!

[axi35]

Hardcover Journal

https://www.redbubble.com/i/notebook/A-Red-Rose-by-Axi35/77124868.RXH2R?asc=u

[futurebird]

I used to say I could stop buying blank books any time I wanted… but I have recognized that I have a pretty serious problem… that’s the first step, right?

When I start using a notebook I have to get another one like it in case I run out… notebooks for the same project must match!

I used to dabble in moleskins, Clairfontaine… but lately I’ve been hitting the harder stuff u know bespoke, hand stitched headbands.

I was even tempted by this rarity. A real fine binding and mostly blank. Thank god the first few pages have writing on them! I wouldn’t feel right removing or keeping them. Talk about intimidating to write in!

https://www.abebooks.com/BLANK-BOOK-BINDING-DREYFOUS-Circa-1890/31007752901/bd

Some people just buy blank books and never write in them. That is very disrespectful in my opinion.

AbeBooks.com: BLANK BOOK.: FINELY BOUND BLANK BOOK. (6.1 x 4.6 inches). Circa 150 blank leaves of laid paper. First five pages have neat han