DIY: Journal pt 1

I’ve been making my own journals for a lot of years now. As a teenager I had terrible insomnia and I often spent hours sitting in my closet crafting the perfect homemade journal. Most of my journals are very personal to me, not just the content but the books themselves. I’ve been continuously making my own journals for some years now, very few of them are store bought. Some are store bought with the covers customized but most are hand made right down to each page.

Over the years (and with the help of the ever-expanding internet) I’ve nearly perfected my book-binding techniques. The first books I made were loosely hand tied together through three-hole punches. As the years went on I started to learn how to properly hold a book together. There are lots of really great tutorials online to look at. This One is my favorite that really helped me hone this technique that I’ve used in a handful of journals over the past year or so.

This post isn’t really meant as a “how-to” tutorial but rather how I do mine. You can take whatever you want from it. My recommendation is to do some searching online and fine a technique that works for you.

You Will Need:

• paper. I make my own lined paper. CLICK HERE to download the PDF file to print (you will need to print on both sides).
• a good ruler
• bone folder (optional)
• pen or pencil
• awl or other sharp, pointy tool
• thread (embroidery thread is recommended)
• 2 tapestry needles
• piece of Styrofoam or something else soft the awl can poke into (to avoid wrecking your table top surface). A small box works well too
• embroidery thread
• glue (optional)

I use the ruler in place of a bone folder. You can use any hard piece of plastic or something else that is soft and flat you can use to press the pages tightly together.

The size of your book, and how many holes you punch in it will depend on the size of the paper you use. For your first book, I recommend using your standard letter size printing paper (8.5 x 11″). Print your pages (or leave them blank, up to you). Fold them in half so that one long end meets the other. I don’t recommend folding together more than 5 pages at a time (otherwise they start to become uneven). The tutorial above recommends doing no more than 2 pages at a time. This is completely up to you and your level of skill in folding paper. I worked in a print shop for 8 years and spent a lot of time folding paper. Use your bone folder or the edge of your ruler to flatten the folded end of the papers. This will allow your pages to sit closer and flatter together.

Open up your pages and lay them  flat. In the creased middle measure out spaces at 0.5″, 2″, 2.5″, 4″, 4.5″, 6″, 6.5″ and 8″. Use your pen or pencil to mark these spots.

Place your pages over your Styrofoam and use your awl to poke holes in each spot you marked.

Fold them back into a booklet shape and put aside. This small booklet of pages is called a “signature”. Books (even store bought, published books) are made up of several signatures of pages stitched and/or glued together. Make your next signature by following the above steps. How many signatures you create is entirely up to you and depends on how big you want your book to be. I do signatures consisting of 5 pieces of paper which ends up equaling 10 pages once they’re folded over. This particular book I am making is 7 signatures resulting in 70 pages to write on. I could have probably added another signature, but was having a lot of trouble printing. I don’t have a very good printer, and as a result quite often the lines weren’t printed properly on the page and some sides were completely missed (pages stick together really bad while printing). I don’t mind having some blank pages because I like to draw on these pages. I just try to make sure the irregular pages are shuffled in with the regular pages so that there aren’t several in a row.

Now comes the fun part; stitching them together. Since I couldn’t find a large enough needle to use embroidery thread I am going to use regular sewing thread and at the end will be gluing the signatures together for added support, in case the sewing thread should break. I recommend you use embroidery thread if you can, and if you do, you do not have to glue.

Get a fair amount of thread on your needle. You will be sewing all the signatures together one row at a time. I recommend starting in the middle and making your way out from there so that the books stay even and you don’t have some that start to poke out etc. As you can see from the photo to the left, all my holes line up nicely along the spine of the signatures.

 

Now here comes the tricky part… line up all of your signatures so that they appear as they will as a book. Cut a generous amount of thread. Thread each tapestry needle so that about 2-4 inches is looped through. Do not tie. (for more clear instructions, please see the tutorial posted above. It is very clearly written with great photos and a video that explains it really well). Start at the back of the first signature and thread one needle through one hole and the other through the next of the 2 inch gap in the middle. Pull them through evenly. Cross the left needle to the right and thread it through the right hole and vice versa for the left needle. So now both needles have gone through the back, crossed on the inside and come back out through the back of the spine. Repeat crossing needles and threading through until you have 2 loops of thread on the spine and your needles are on the outside of the signature.

 

Add the next signature, lined up, and thread from one signature through the back of the next. There should now be parallel lines running across each signature. Cross your needles on the inside and thread into opposite holes like you did in the first signature. Repeat until you have two threads running down the spine of the second signature. Add the next signature in the same fashion and repeat with each until you have all of your signatures stitched together across 2 inches of the spine.

The tutorial I linked above tells you to knot each corner of each stitch on every signature at the end until your needle ends up back to where you started. I prefer to knot after I finish each signature. I find that otherwise it does have more of a tendency to be pulled loose while I’m working on the next ones. Knotting after each signature secures it in place better.

I don’t think there should be one strict way of binding a book. Get as creative as you’d like with it. Use different patterns in the stitching, different colours of thread, different styles of bounding. A quick google search of “no glue book binding” will come up with a lot of different styles. Or, if you’d like, you can find a book binding tutorial that uses glue instead. Or like I did, and use both! Use heavy books to weigh down the signatures on the edge of a desk. Use whichever kind of glue you’d like. Mod Podge is one of my favorites. Here I am using a mixture of Elmer’s glue with water.

Keep the coats of glue thin. Use a fat brush to paint the glue along the spine of the signatures. You want the glue to seal all the thread so that no knots come undone. You may want to do several coats. Don’t worry if you get a little on the outer pages. You don’t want them to be soaked or they will crinkle, but any glue spots won’t be seen once the cover is put on.

 

There you have it, the first part of DIY Journal is finished. The next part is my favorite, which is creating the cover and attaching it to your signatures. Please stay tuned for the next part of this DIY series!

 

 

DIY: How to Make a Tortillon

“Tortillon” also known as: Paper Stump, Paper Stomp, Blending Stick, Blending Stump

For sake of clarity I’m going to refer to them as “tortillon”. There is actually a slight difference between your average blending stump and a “tortillon”. They are both used for the same purpose (to blend, smudge and otherwise move graphite, pastel or charcoal around a page) and are both made from paper. The difference is in the size and design. Tortillons tend to be more narrow and shorter, and often have a point at only one end. Stumps tend to be fatter, heavier, longer and most often have a point at either end. The design I made closer resembles a tortillon. They all do the same thing just one is finer than the other.

Let’s get started. You will need a sheet of paper. Any kind of white paper; I used regular 8.5 x 11″ letter-sized copy paper. The size of the paper will result in different sizes of stumps.

With your paper horizontal mark one inch down from the top and one inch up from the bottom on either side (see left). Connect the points with a straight edge.

 

 

 

 

This will create two tortillons.

Set one aside while you work on the other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Start from the short end (right end of image left) and roll as tightly and evenly as you possibly can towards the wide end.

Use a pin or a handy helper to keep your rolled paper tight and firm. Use a wire, knitting needle, thin paint brush etc. and push into the open end so that the paper is pushed through the other end and forms a “cone” or point. Once you have the desired point you want secure it in place with a small amount of tape.

 

 

Trim the excess paper on the end. You can also fold it over and secure it with tape.

You’ll notice your end is a bit dull and the edges of the paper are shape. Use sandpaper to get a fine, smooth tip. The finer the sandpaper the smoother the tip will be.

Experiment with different sizes and types of paper and try for a very tight, even roll for the best results.

 

 

To clean your tortillon rub with sandpaper until the paper is white (or at least, looks cleaner). Eventually you will sand away too much paper and will need to make a new one. They’re so easy to make though and much cheaper than store bought!

You can also keep one “dirty” (or of a specific colour) to use it almost like a drawing tool when shading. Make sure to always use a new one or to clean your tortillon if you wish to go from a darker colour/shade to light etc. otherwise you will blend unwanted colours and shades together.

Need more pictures and details than this tutorial provides? Check out this Wiki-How with great instructional photos.

 

 

 

The Ugly Basket

Sometimes I like to take a break from the fine arts and focus on pointless crafty crap. Like scrap booking (or as my dad calls it “crap booking”), making bracelets, Halloween decorations, dog toys etc. Something that keeps your hands busy and you can easily do in front of the television. I’ve been sick for the past few days so spent the weekend creating an ugly basket. Well, my goal was not to create an ugly basket but that’s what I ended up with. I completely “winged” it and didn’t base it off any plans or design. This is why it turned out ugly. I don’t particularly care that it’s ugly and have been told it’s ugliness is kind of charming and cute. Without further adieu; here is the Ugly Basket: And that’s it’s good side… So what’s the purpose of this ugly little basket? To hold misc. socks. I don’t actually wear matching socks so it seems rather pointless, but I do wear “semi-matching” socks. This means they need to be relatively the same size, shape and texture to “match”. Sometimes I match them with similar patterns too (stripes with stripes etc.) but never the same pair of socks. Yeah, I’m weird. My darling Husband-to-be doesn’t particularly care but I do make a point to match his socks most of the time. We all know how socks can be, often times you find one missing or it becomes a Holy Sock and needs to be thrown out. But why waste TWO socks when only one is damaged? Therefore; I throw the random socks that are partnerless onto our dresser where they await a suitable partner should one appear. This basket shall be the new home for these single socks! A sort of, “Bachelor Socks Apt.” if you will. I’m also a huge fan of recycling  (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) as I do work for a recycling company. Our dresser essentially houses all clothing we currently don’t wear but can’t throw out. Some of it is “special occasion” clothes but mostly it’s stuff I got too fat to wear but was determined “one day I’ll fit into them” so I stuffed them in a drawer. A lot of it is stuff I know I have no hope of fitting into again but I kept because they’re my favorite or I liked the colour or in some cases I barely wore at all before I got too fat (it seemed to have happened over night. Thyroid problems). I dug through them all and pulled out the ones I was willing to accept that I’ll never wear again. Except the ones I love like my Volbeat or Alex Pardee shirt. Those I’m determined I’ll either fit into one day or they’ll be repurposed to display the art on them. Anyway, here is an instructional on how you too can make your very own ugly basket!!

Step One: Cut up clothing into strips. I thought using old socks would be ironic but it turns out they’re just annoying and way too small. I ended up tying a lot of them together which just made the thing full of knots (and adding to the ugliness). So I would suggest using fabric/clothing you can cut long enough strips from. Unless you’re going for a pattern; that would require some work to determine how many/how long of each colour you’ll need. I didn’t use a pattern nor did I have any idea how I was making the thing when I started.

Step Two: Make a frame. This, turns out, is the tricky part and what makes or breaks your basket. I started with Sculpy clap and spent the time shaping, baking and painting it before realizing there’s no way it was going to hold up to the pressure of a weave.

As you can see, it didn’t work from the start. I used two colours to make the top (pictured left). This is the same method I just learned to make dog tug toys. I will likely make a tutorial for this later on but if you’re interested in learning how to make dog tug toys like this you can find the tutorial I first used HERE.

When I realized the Sculpy was a fail I used instead wire and #2 pencils. The wire was a thick (not sure the grade) kind I had saved from baling cardboard and was going to use for sculpting. I doubled it over, wrapped it around itself and taped it to make sure it was tight and there were no “pokey” pieces sticking out. If I were to do it again I’d use a stronger frame as eventually the pressure bent the wire. They weren’t quite fastened together very well either, that is also something I’d also change if I were to do it again.

Step Three: Start weaving. If you’re not sure how to weave you should figure that out first. Here’s a Handy Instructional.  I started with about 9 pieces vertical (see picture above/left). Again, what I’d change here is I would put in a few more vertical pieces to start. Maybe 11-14 instead. I attached the “rope” on the top by tying the loose ends to the wire (‘d made loops through the end of the wire so this made it easier). I used one of my sculpting tools to pull pieces of the rope loose to fit the vertical strips through and tie them. The first wall like this I did the rope was too tight and I had a hell of a time fitting the strips through.

The second one I made I made looser but I found it was too loose and ended up swaying under the pressure moreso than the first one. If I were to do it again I’d make sure they were both tight and would suffer through the process of getting the strips through. As I weaved and reached each end I put a single knot through the end wire to keep the strip in place and turn it back around. As a strip came to an end I tied a different coloured strip to it and continued weaving. Knots that had a nice “bow” look to them I kept on the outside while ugly knots were buried on the inside (if you look inside the basket it’s quite the mess). So keep note of which side will be the inside and which will be your outside.

Step Four: Add the walls together. I did the small walls (with the rope “handles” on top) first and then attached the longer walls to attach the two pieces together. You can see the taped wire frame a lot better in this picture (right). I tied them to each end with the rope handles. Some I taped others I just tied. The taped ones held up better than the tied ones (I used packing tape, not scotch tape. I don’t think scotch tape would have held up). Once in place the procedure repeated: do several vertical strips first (again I would do more than I did here) and then continue with weaving.

Step Five: Weave the bottom into place using the same method. This was easiest as I did not have to attach any walls. I did, however, have to keep readjusting the basket to keep it from weaving into a Leaning Tower of Pisa look. This time, instead of picking out pretty “bow” knots to leave on the outside I made sure all knots were tucked into the inside. This was to keep the basket from being unbalanced. However, kind of a pointless procedure as my basket collapsed under itself anyway. If your basket is sturdier this makes more sense to do.

There you have it! Your very own ugly basket!

I hope yours turned out much prettier than mine.