A hobby notebook
Notes on bookbinding, paper craft and keeping handwritten journals.
I make small books at the kitchen table: sewn pamphlets, exposed-spine sketchbooks, recased notebooks and the odd sheet of decorated paper. This ledger records the methods, the mistakes and the small discoveries along the way, mostly so that I remember them next time.
Latest entries
- 2026.10.24 Ruling my own pages by hand Making custom lined, grid and column pages for hand-bound notebooks with a pencil, a ruler and a simple card template.
- 2026.09.12 Folding and nesting signatures neatly Small habits that make a big difference to how a finished book looks: how many sheets per section, which way to fold and how to keep everything square.
- 2026.07.04 Giving a worn-out notebook a new hard cover How I rescued a much-loved notebook whose cover had fallen apart, by building a new case around the original pages.
- 2026.05.09 Choosing paper that takes ink well Feathering, bleed-through and ghosting explained, plus the simple test sheet I now make before binding any new paper into a notebook.
- 2026.03.21 Indexing a handwritten journal so you can find things again Page numbers, a few blank pages at the front and a handful of simple symbols: the low-effort system that made my notebooks searchable.
- 2026.02.07 Paste paper endpapers from kitchen ingredients Decorated paper made with flour paste and ordinary paint, combed and stamped into patterns. A messy, cheerful afternoon project.