Have You Considered Making Your Own Journals?

With everything going on and people staying home due to the Coronavirus, now might be a good time to try your hand at making your own journals. The major positive is having journals with paper you love whether it's one type and brand or a mixed journal of various type papers you enjoy using depending on the mediums you like to use.

Although a little time consuming (which might help with the down time at home), it's really not that difficult once you know where to look for instruction and what to do. Once you finish and you hold that journal in your hand, you'd be amazed by the pride and joy you feel knowing YOU created the book sketching and displaying your artwork.

The easiest of the home-made journals are probably the accordion style (similar to what's shown here) where you fold and cut a full sheet of watercolor paper and simply glue mat board either plain or covered in fancy paper to front and back.

Another easy type of home-made journal would be cutting full sheets of paper down to the size you wish to work on and having it spiral bound...either by purchasing equipment to bind your own or later having it done at a print shop or local office supply. I think the postal service or UPS might do it also for a fee but not sure on that. I have my own binding machine so my knowledge is limited to what's offered out there.

One of my favorites and easy to make would be the Traveler's or Midori style journal with paper cut to preferred size and using a thick piece of faux leather for a cover plus elastic bands to hold your paper in place. There are various ways to make the covers from simple leather/faux leather to sewn fabric covers or even hard casings (which I haven't tried yet).   My favorite are the fabric sewn covers I made a couple years ago for myself and as gifts for several people.

Not only were the journals fun to make but I so enjoyed making charms to hang for that little added interest.

For me, I love all of the above type journals but I have to say the most rewarding has been the hardbound fabric-covered, hand-sewn journals I've made. I have several posts I've made about the various hand-made journals but thought I'd write this one......an update summary of sorts with a pdf I've created that helps me remember what to do that others might find helpful.

This pdf is specific to creating 5 x 5 1/2" size journals. Except for how to cut full sheets for other sizes, the rest is basic information for any size you decide to go with. 

The first two pages of the document is a basic outline I created for myself laying out the steps followed by instructions and images.  Besides the tab at the top of my blog named "Bookbinding," there is  a link within the document to my post of the most helpful videos I found to create my journals.  Sea Lemon is wonderful and easy to follow.

Bookbinding 5x55 BooksCOMP 

So if you'd like to find something different to work on.........challenging but fun to do, consider trying your hand at making your own journals for sketching and painting.  

Two Toned Covered Handmade Journal

With the last journal in this second batch, I decided to try my hand at a two-toned or dual covered book casing.

I've seen where the two different papers or fabrics were overlapped and I've seen it done "butting up" the two pieces together without overlap.  I decided to go that route.......no overlap.

And with this one, it's a combination of fabric for the spine area and decorative paper for the rest of the cover.  The fabric is as thin as the paper so I thought it should work well together.  Not sure how well this will hold up but time will tell.

The order I was waiting for to finish this last journal was from Hollander's.  They have such a fantastic selection of fabrics and papers specializing in bookbinding.  Their selection is almost overwhelming for someone who's still green with understanding best fabrics and papers for bookbinding.  I might have to get their samplers just so I can see and feel fabric before making another purchase. 

Anyways.........from my order, I used an Italian fabric which is paper thin.........much thinner than what I'm used to working with between my own handmade book cloth and that which I've purchased from Lineco.  I had to be careful of glue getting on the fabric because although the glue dries clear, it dries darker than the rest of the material.

I love the results but not sure I'd want to make too many like these...........definitely more time consuming.

Making Journals

No sketching for me right now as I'm going through one of my slumps or "recharge" periods.  While I wait it out, I'm making new journals.  It's been over three years since I made my first batch of hardbound / hand sewn journals and decided it was time to do some with extra paper laying around and taking up space.

Spent several days re-viewing videos and asking questions on doing these as I had forgotten quite a bit in three years.  Once I felt ready to take on the challenge, I started by creating three 5" x 5.5" journals out of two sheets of found Arches 140lb watercolor paper (found in storage).

Once they were finished, I decided to create journals out of 10 sheet packs of Fabriano Artistico 140lb cold and hot press paper (11" x 14") purchased MANY years ago.  In fact, you cannot get these packs of 10 sheets any longer as they now sell them in packages of five at a higher price than I paid for these 10 sheet packs.  In addition, this is back before they changed how they make their paper.........back when Fabriano was my #1 favorite.

5" x 5.5" Journals out of Arches:

5.5" x 7" Journals from Fabriano Artistico (old stock) 11" x 14" Sheet Packs:

So far.....

Still have a sixth one partially done but waiting on fabric to come in this week I wanted to try from Hollander's. 

Now I'm trying to decide if I want to make spiral sketchbooks or continue with these hand sewn ones with the hard casings.

Bookbinding - Make your Own - AWESOME Instructional Video

In the tab above the blog feed labeled "Bookbinding", I have posts that cover this topic........to include Sea Lemon's YouTube videos I used to make my first hand sewn journals.

In addition to my favorite videos by Sea Lemon, I found and purchased the following DVD.  Slow paced and very easy to follow step by step to include advanced steps that might strike your fancy...all wrapped up in one video.

For a preview of this DVD, it can be found at the following:

On The Air Video / Bookbinding
or
YouTube / Croquis Cafe / Bookbinding:  A Traditional Technique

To purchase, you can do so directly via the link taking you to On The Air Video / Bookbinding (above) or through Amazon.

Run-time of the DVD is about an hour.

Making Your Own Hand Sewn Hard Cased Journals

My favorite videos (and a PDF) on how to make your own Hand Sewn Journal Books - Hard Cover

Of all the videos I have watched, those listed below are my #1 favorites!  All are by Sea Lemon on the YouTube Channel.  She has several other videos related to bookbinding as well......different variations.  For the complete playlist, follow this link:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2F704E01F80BA1E9

Click on images to take you to the videos/pdf

1)  Making a Text Block of signatures - shows how to sew signatures together using a Kettle Stitch

2)  Making Headbands (Optional)

3)  Creating the Book Casing

4)  Making Your Own Book Cloth

5)  Make Your Own Book Press

6)  Make Your Own Punch Cradle (pdf)

NOTE:  The book press and punch cradle are totally optional.  You can use a stack of books or anything heavy in place of the book press and an old telephone book opened up using the center to place your folded signatures for punching.  That's how I did it before my husband made me both.

Additional Journals Made

This makes three hand sewn hard bound journals I've made.  Each were done a little differently as I try various methods to see which suited me best.

The first as shown in previous post was using scrapbook paper for end pages and purchased book cloth.

The second here was trying scrapbook card stock paper (little thicker than paper but not a real stiff card stock).  I found when I folded this it wanted to crack a bit at the fold.  Was easier to glue but at the same time wasn't as easy to smooth out wrinkles when glued down.  With this journal and the third, I made my own book cloth taking cotton fabric, iron on adhesive, and tissue paper.

The third journal I decided to go without the end pages.  I think for future books I'll either use the thinner scrapbook paper stock or none at all.  This was easier to put together (text block into book casing) either because I didn't mess with end papers or because it's getting easier with each one I make :-)

After I finished these, I made three spiral journals using the same 140lb cold press watercolor paper.  Two were made with soft vinyl covers and the other was made using mat board.

Even though I would have liked to have covered these with fabric, I wasn't sure how my binding machine would handle cutting through glued on fabric.

So here are the journals I have been working on the last several days.  I made a total of six accordion fold journals with 14 usable pages and three twice the number of pages (shown here).

With the size spirals used (9/16"), I was able to fit 19 pages in the hard cover - 38 front and back and 21 pages - 42 pages front and back (covers were thinner allowing two additional pages).  Hand sewn journals were made with 20 pages - 40 pages front and back.

My First Hard Bound Hand Sewn Journal Book

Ohhhh what lessons learned with my first attempt!!!

It was touch and go with various mishaps along the way but I managed to finish my first journal and I have to say, I'm pleased as can be.............flaws and all.

I watched so many YouTube videos on this and in doing so became a bit confused with stitches used on sewing together the signatures.  With this first one..........I can't say what stitch I used but definitely not the coptic stitch which I later used on the other two text blocks I have waiting to be covered.  This stitch didn't really pull this thick watercolor paper together as tightly like the coptic stitch but I understand gaps are normal between signatures when using heavier paper stock regardless of stitch used.

I debated gluing the text block along the spine but ended up doing so which helped a bit but still have some gaps between signatures.  When I glued the spine on this book, I didn't add any paper or cloth.......instead straight on the spine itself.  I think with the other two books, I'll add a piece of cloth when gluing the spine.

With this one, I made end sheets (or liner sheets for front and back of text block).  At first I thought maybe I should have used thicker paper but it actually turned out OK in the end.  Still think I'll try for thicker paper as it might not wrinkle as easily when gluing to the hard casing.  Then again, I may just glue book casing straight onto the first and last page of the actual signatures.

Another little mishap was with the book cloth.  I purchased actual book cloth for this first book, rather than making my own.  It's not a very big piece either so I didn't have room for error.  What do I do????  I'm all set up with glued mat board to place on the book cloth and lay it down smoothing it out only to realize I had just placed it on the wrong side of the book cloth.  I quickly pulled the mat board back up but glue was on the cloth.  Trying to (hopefully) dab the glue up with a wet cloth, the material lost its stiffness and started to deform and wrinkle.  I thought for sure I had ruined it.  But I decided to go ahead and continue forward after the cloth dried from where I wet it.

Amazingly, it all worked out smoothing the cloth with a bone folder onto the glued mat board (correctly placed on the proper side........LOL)

As a last minute decision, I decided to use headbands but of course should have been placed on the text block before adding the mull.  But again.........it worked out OK in the end.

Placing the case onto the text block was the most challenging of all.  I honestly didn't think it would look all that great and had trouble placing it.  Thank goodness the glue doesn't dry too quickly.

One other lesson learned is taking greater care in measuring my boards for the book casing.  I only wanted about 1/8" to 1/4" border showing around the text block but ended up with much more.  Top and bottom were OK but the right side not so much.  Had I planned it that way, I could have added a loop to hold a pencil which would have worked out perfect in the space.  Maybe next time if I decide to go that route but I really prefer to have less inside casing border.

All in all.................I am truly happy with the results.

1)  Sewing the Signatures into Text Block

2)  Inside after gluing the spine (still some gaps between the signatures towards the back of the book

3)  Text Block after adding End Sheets and Mull (that green paper as added support holding it all together)

4)  Cutting the front and back cover boards (mat board) plus spine support

5)  After gluing cover boards and spine support on book cloth and folding glued cloth around edges

6)  Outside of book casing

7)  After text block glued to book casing

8)  Front cover finished book

9)  Inside front cover

10)  Center of book

11)  Inside back cover

12)  Back of finished book