Finally Finished: Hand Embroidered Notecards

In anticipation of holiday-related social calls (read: people coming to our apartment), I’ve been cleaning up around the place. Last night I went through the big bookcase, finding treasures (and plenty of junk). Among the treasures: a tiny dried out gingko leaf, and these embroidered notecards I made back in 2012 or 2013.

I completely forgot that I made these until I found them in a paper bag tucked inside a book. I’d already done the hard part of embroidering through the paper; each card just needed a piece of cardstock glued on the inside to hide the messy backs of the stitches. I took care of that and now they’re ready to go!

Each card is about 4 by 6 inches, typical notecard size. The elephants, tortoise, and single sloth are my own design; the sloth with baby is a free pattern from Wild Olive.

Hooray for cleaning up!

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Finished Project: Adventures in Bookmaking

When I was growing up, I was fascinated by a local bookbinding company that we would sometimes pass on the highway, Wert Bookbinding. My mom would tell me about how she went to school with one of the Wert sons who now was running the bookbindery, and I would think, “Wow! That must be such a cool job! I wish my family made books!” But now I can say that I, too, can make books, though probably not a quarter as well as an actual bookbinding company.

I wanted a small journal with a map-print cover but didn’t want to just go buy another thing, so I figured out how to make one with materials I already had around the house. Behold, the fruits of my first adventure in bookmaking:

The front cover

The back cover

The spine

Mmmm, blank pages

I knew some of the basics of making books before I started (you need paper, and something for the cover… and there’s sewing involved) but I found some great tutorials on the interwebs that helped me through. I mostly followed this tutorial from Trumpetvine Travels. It is actually about how to put different paper in a Moleskine notebook, but it had the clearest instructions on putting together signatures and sewing the binding. Then I used this Instructables tutorial to guide me through the rest of the process (starting around step 6).

For this journal, I used stuff I already had. The pages are 24-pound letter-sized paper (8.5 by 11 inches, or close to A4 size if you’re not in the USA), folded in half. This weight of paper is slightly more substantial than the typical printer paper — it is what you’d use for resumés or nice letters — but I’m sure regular printer paper would also work.

The cover is cut from a very thick shopping bag from some fancy store, it is about as thick as cardstock. I used a gluestick to glue the map onto the cover, then carefully folded the edges over and glued them down. One thing that was super helpful in this process was a bone folder; it is great for getting really crisp folds and for smoothing out bumps when you’re gluing down paper.

Since I wanted to use this book as a daily journal, I used a date stamp to put dates on the pages.

Now it is all ready to be filled!

Have any readers out there tried to make their own journals or books? How was your experience?