I hope I'm not generalizing, but every artist I know, including myself, is obsessed with sketchbooks and notebooks. We love to buy them and fill them up with our ideas, thoughts, and inspirations. But I am often poor and cannot justify spending $20 or more on yet another notebook (especially since I am notoriously bad for never finishing them), no matter how pretty it is. So why not make your own? It's much cheaper, and very satisfying to use. I've made several, and I get many compliments on them, or at the very least a surprised, "Where did you get that?" There are many ways of putting your own notebook together. Today I will show you a hardcover notebook. Also, I maintain that my way may not be the very best way of doing things, so if you have a better idea for a step, feel free to try it. This is just what works for me.
Your essential ingredients list: decorative cover paper, cardboard, plain paper (I use regular computer paper), scissors or Exacto knife, ruler, glue, something to spread glue with, some fabric, two full soup cans (bear with me), a pencil, two thin stiff items, clips to hold the stiff items together
Optional ingredients: decorative inside paper, bone folder
First, take your plain paper and make it whatever size you want your notebook to be. Mine is 5.5" x 8.5", which is the size of computer paper folded in half, because it's easy. I take a stack of five 8.5" x 11" sheets and fold them in half together to make a packet of 10 pages. I use a bookbinder's needle and thread to bind the pages together at the folder so they stay together. For this notebook, I used six of these packets. You can really use anything for your pages, but as I said earlier, this is what works for me. And packets work well.
Take your cardboard and cut two pieces, each the size of your pages. These will be your covers. Cut another piece that's the height of your cover cardboard and the width of the all the pages going inside the notebook, squished together. Glue them on the "wrong" side of your decorative cover paper like the picture below. Leave a small space between each piece of cardboard and at least a 1" border around all sides.
When gluing, be sure to spread the glue evenly! Use your optional bone folder to make sure the cover paper stays smooth. You want your covers to look nice! (Or you don't... that's up to you.) Also, I put the glue on the cardboard, not the paper. Feel free to try it the other way.
Double-check that you have at least a 1" border on all sides. Cut out the corners of the cover paper.
Glue the paper flaps to the cardboard. Even gluing! Use the bone folder if you need to!
Mine needs to dry, so here's one I prepared earlier. (A former off-brand Snuggie box. I save everything.)
Set your covers aside for a few minutes. Take your pages and stack them up, all folded edges on one side. Make the side with those folded edges as even and neat as possible. Then hold your stack in place using your two stiff thin items and clips. I am using more cardboard and binder clips, but wooden paint stirrers would probably work much better.
Spread some glue on your strip of fabric, long enough for your careful stacked paper to rest. Then stick the folded-edges-side of your stack to the glue. Set the stack up like the following picture with the soup cans holding it up, in order to dry. (The fabric is on the table. It might be hard to see, so I apologize.)
Once your pages are secure on the fabric, you can remove your stiff items and clips. Trim the fabric to be only as tall as your page stack, otherwise it will stick out the top ad bottom of your notebook. The excess fabric to either side of the page stack should only be 1"-1.5" long.
Spread glue on the inside of your covers EXCEPT FOR THE THIN CARDBOARD STRIP IN THE MIDDLE. Other than that, use enough glue that the fabric, and thus page stack, will not come off. Carefully place the page stack upright along the thin cardboard strip. Hold it in place and press the fabric to the glue you just put down. Keep the fabric as taut as possible without pulling the page stack out of place. Use soup cans to hold the page stack in place while things dry.
Once this is dry, you technically have a fully functioning notebook. But I think being able to see the cardboard and the fabric doesn't look very nice, so the last step is to add a decorative inside paper. Measure and cut two sheets of this paper that are each large enough to cover the cover and the first page. Glue the paper to the cover. Also spread a little glue right along the seam of the fabric and first page so your inside paper will stick and cover it. Do the other side too.
Now you have your own homemade notebook!
No comments:
Post a Comment