A Yen For Paper

POSTCARDS RECYCLED

I was enjoying making the Japanese Kangxi bindings the other day, when it dawned on me, that it would be fun to use postcards as front covers for some of these little notebooks.

I don’t know if you are like me, but I suspect you might be - and in that case you will have quite a large pile of cards and postcards that you have gleaned from your trips to art galleries, museum shops etc, or you have picked up some of those free publicity postcards you find in cafe’s sometimes, or kept cards sent to you by friends and family.  Anyway, you always think - oh that’s an interesting image, I will take that and do something with it later.  Well this is the something that I finally decided to do and I thought you might like to try it too.

I looked for front cover cards that were A6 or slightly larger and then trimmed them to size, I also cut a plain card of the same size for the back cover and folded some A5 paper in half to make the text block of the book, making sure to keep all of the open sides at the spine edge of the notebook.

Then you simply make a template for marking the holes and pierce right through the book after aligning the pages and cover and using a clip to keep them in place.All that is left to do now is to do the stitching which is really quite simple, provided you make the holes large enough to accommodate the thickness of the needle and strong thread you intend to use. 

If you are unsure about the method of stitching there are various little tutorials for Japanese stab bindings on youtube.com, you can check them out here or you could treat yourself to a copy of the book “Japanese Bookbinding” by Kōjirō Ikegami, which I find to be an excellent, well illustrated manual with clear step by step instructions for all sorts of Japanese bindings.

Hope you enjoy using up your stash of postcards!

EXPANDING SKETCHBOOK JOURNAL

What can you make out of bits and bobs such as these? The answer is an expanding sketchbook journal - and the lovely thing about it is that you can incorporate whatever takes your fancy.

 

I was commissioned to make this particular binding in lovely neutral papers and I find the resulting journal very pleasing, tactile and intriguing at the same time.

 

It is in fact a type of concertina binding as you can see, with Codex sewn into both the mountain and the valley folds of the pleated spine.  The ribbon is added to give some stability and to stop in from expanding completely out of control!

 

Although you can, of course keep adding to it as you wish by sewing in extra drawings or collaging more or less indefinitely.

This one includes double pages for landscape drawings/images,

 

little envelopes for keeping your treasures safe,

 

and sewn pocket flaps for tucking in any interesting small items.

My hope for this little journal is that is will be well used and well loved, and that it will become more and more precious as it is further customised and personalised. It's a far cry from Moleskine, but me I kind of prefer it.

PUBLISHED TODAY!

Hurray! The first Carnival of Pen, Pencil and Paper has been published today.  You can check out all of the mouth-watering stationery goodies here, including my yummy Japanese bound notebooks, of course.  Enjoy!

CARNIVAL

If like me you are a lover of pens, pencils and especially paper, then check out the Carnival, announced below.

"It’s time for something new! Introducing the Carnival of Pen, Pencil and Paper, which will kick off here at Notebook Stories on Tuesday, August 4th. Future editions will be hosted by The Pen Addict on September 8th , Office Supply Geek on October 6th, and other blogs yet to be determined.

What is the Carnival of Pen, Pencil and Paper? Will there be cotton candy and rides?

The Carnival is a monthly collection of the best blog posts about notebooks, journals, pens, pencils, paper products and other related topics, appearing at a different blog the first Tuesday of every month. Any unhealthy foods and unnatural G-force levels will be purely virtual."

You can read more about it at www.notebookstories.com

DECORATIVE JAPANESE BINDINGS

As you can see, I have been doing quite a lot of binding this past week. Quite a pile of it, in fact.

 

I had been loathe to cut into my treasured sheets of handmade Washi, (some of which I showed in my previous post), they were so beautiful - several of them even looked like they were lit from within and the closer I looked at them, the more special they became. However, at the beginning of the week, I decided to make a start, and having begun, I just couldn't stop. 

Each time I completed one, I thought "Oh, I wonder what this paper would look like once it was bound - they were so pleasing to look at, to hold and to use. The notebook above shows the Kangxi variation on the Four-Hole Binding.

 

This green and pink one with the lovely gold splashes is the Hemp-Leaf binding, or asa-no-ha toji, to give it its correct Japanese name.

These binding look deceptively simple, but require a lot of accurate work, in order to achieve a good standard of finish. I think I will need to make quite a few more, before I achieve anything even approaching the Japanese sample I have.

 

Ah well, I can always dream. One of the aesthetics espoused by Japanese Design - "Bukkyo" - refers to constant refinement and improvement. So I guess I shall just have to bind a whole heap more :-)