Handmade Notebooks

I can post these now, lol. I've been taking a couple back home to sew up every few days and my wife asked if she could have a couple.

So these are the ones I have left now she's swiped the ones she wanted 😁

This is going to sound a bit clinical/practical for something that's supposed to be a bit crafty, but now I've;

✅ Tested I can print the pages.
✅ I have a tool to previewing and cutting out the cover.
✅ The paper crease maker and hole stencil works. ✅ I can carry the paper and cover home to sew.
✅ I can carry the sewn notebooks back to the studio for trimming.
✅ I can squish the notebooks using the squishing lid. ✅ The belly bands work for keeping the under control.

A lot of my work seems to centre around finding flows, where I can't properly start doing the thing until everything is properly in place. If something has a little bit of friction then I can't settle down until I've removed that.

Unfortunately because I have a lot going on, it can be a couple of weeks between tackling what's sometimes a very easy to solve bit of friction. Meaning something simple like making a notebook, is actually a several weeks long process.

Happy I'm here now. Although I do have some more research to do for the best type of cover paper!

I redesigned the notebook carrying box a bit. And by "redesigned" I mainly mean making it a little deeper and a little wider on each side, just 2mm. But now I can carry all the pages and covers I need to make some notebook home, and then easily pack the stitched notebooks back to the studio for trimming.

Had a chance to update the design of the notebook creaser :)

I should be used to this now, no matter how well thought out your design is, as soon as you 3d print it and start using it, it becomes apparent that there's room for improvement.

And then when I'm designing the next thing I'm like "I've thought of everything", but of course I haven't.

So, a deeper "crease" and a wider lid for adding more pressure and it's a lot better.

Adding to the library of very specific tools for a very niche job, this is a try you can place paper in, that has a groove along the bottom. Then there's a lid with a ridge (that fits snugly into the groove). You place the paper inside and then squash down to add a crease making it easier to fold them all in one go.

As a final touch there's a set of holes that I can punch making the whole thing easier to sew together.

Updated the code to make "generative" pages. The design of each page is the same, but the colours are semi-random. There's a range of palettes to pick from, and then it randomised the colours picked from that palette, which means each page is different.

I printed these out and then punched holes to stitch them together, using an old print as the cover.

Four iterations of a tool to help me preview the area of a print I can use for a notebook.

The first version has a "viewport" that lets you frame the area you want to keep, and corners that can be used to mark the trim lines for cutting.

The second version extended the side so make it easier to hold in place.

The third version also added edges to mark the size of an A5 sheet. So it can be cut down to A5, the same size as the paper so it can be trimmed down and the corners cut all in one go.

The final version adds a couple of extra markers to make drawing the A5 size edges, and the corner trim marks a little easier.

The tool in action, showing what a notebook cover could look like.

Back to thinking about notebooks. There's a design I use for my journal pages that has a main dotted area which Kitty writes my daily journal entries. The a grid on the side so I can track things (like how many glasses of water drunk and so on). And down at the bottom a lined area I can write my own notes.

I like this layout, so I've adjusted it slightly and written some code that generates these pages. The dots and lines here are thick and chunky so I can see what's going on easily.

I've just written about this over in Rubber Stamping Machine but feels like the start of something here too.

This was a very simple hack, use the Rubber Stamping Machine to stamp out words onto thin card, deconstruct a FIELD NOTES notebook and replace the cover with my own, re-staple them and 🎉 new notebooks.

Using the paper from FIELD NOTES felt a bit like cheating, because it was, so I guess the next step is to print my own paper.