For the past few evenings I’ve had some crafty supplies out and I’ve been making my own notebooks. I’m on a bit of a mission to use up my supplies as much as I can. And I have some beautiful card stock papers that have sat in my stash for years. I can’t even remember why I bought them. Can anyone relate?
Also, when you go through notebooks as frequently as I do, it’s a shame to always be buying new when I could be using what I already have. As with anything handmade, there’s the option to personalize, to make things the way you like them, in a way that nobody else would. I love that.
It is often assumed that the chief reason for making things—furniture, clothing, toys, a garden—is to save money. There are other factors that may be of equal or greater importance: making what we need for life is a way of expressing creativity and of gaining greater confidence. Emotional security comes from providing the necessities of life in personal, meaningful ways, by our own hands or those of friends and loved ones.
William Coperthwaite, A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity
This isn’t a tutorial, there are lots of good ones around already. (I like this one.) But I’ll list the supplies I used to give you an idea, or a starting point. These are the dimensions of mine: 21cm x 22 cm (8 1/4 inches x 8 3/4 inches) to make a notebook that’s 21cm x 11cm (8 1/4 inches x 4 3/8 inches). This is the size of a standard TN, so that I can use them with my current set-up. But obviously you can make them any size that suits you.
My Notebook Making Supplies
It’s a very satisfying project. The hardest part is figuring out the spacing of the holes down the centre of the pages. You’ll be much better at that than I am. Pro tip: make a template.
P.S. Another version of handmade notebooks I wrote about a long time ago.
