recycled notebooks

rather than study for my spacecraft dynamics final exam, i made some open-spine notebooks. all materials came from the recycling bin.

for this first book, the covers are postcard flyers, promoting some entertainment event. the inside pages are detailed drawings of my mech eng project, all printed on one side. i folded these papers in four, such that the printed side remains inside. the spine is poorly stitched, loose at some ends. i need more practice.



for the second book, the covers were cut out of a frozen pizza box. the inside papers are scraps from some photocopies i made. the spine was stitched more tightly, with a better finish.



i made these while listening to the new damien rice cd i got.

update: january 2008. during the winter break, i re-stitched these notebooks. posted here are the new pictures.

matchbook notepad

i've been seeing a lot of these on craft sites, so i decided to try one myself. very simple, i made it while procrastinating from my studies... the materials were scraps left over from the father's day card project.



when gluing the paper together to make the cover, i made sure to dry it between two large stacks of books, so that the paper would remain flat. however, i was impatient, and started working with the paper before it completely dried, resulting in a warped cover.

scrap paper notebook

i decided to try making an open-spine notebook, using coptic stitch. since this was just an exercise and i wasn't planning on using the book, i used the cheapest, most accessible materials i could find. for the pages inside, i took some discarded printed paper from the recycling bin. for the cover, i cut the cardboard from a box of coke cans. all the signatures are stitched together using ordinary white sewing thread.

i followed the coptic stich tutorial here:
http://www.doe.state.in.us/olr/grantprojects/books/Coptic%20Book.htm

front:


spine:


i'm quite pleased with the way it turned out. the book doesn't close entirely flat, but that's because i used some flimsy cardboard as cover, which is not heavy enough.

this was easy to make. i think i should start collecting nice paper to make notebooks with.

father's day card

for father's day, i made a card, also accordian-style. again, all supplies came from the dollarama.

front:


back:


inside:

mother's day card

i made my mom a card, accordion-book-style. all supplies (papers, paint, plastic flowers) came from the dollar store. hurray for dollarama!

front and back covers:


inside: i wrote "mom: happy mother's day", with one character on each page.


yeah, my handwriting is laughable...

reconstructed: biology books

a while ago, there was a box of free books sitting in the hallway at school, so i took a couple.

one of them was a 1960's book, a little larger than 5.5" x 8.5". i ripped out the textblock and replaced it with blank white pages. i used some of the original pages as endpapers. the spine and corners showed some wear, so i repaired them with duct tape. unfortunately, i ran out of tape, which is why i left the back cover corners intact.

front:


inside pages:


this first reconstructed book has the problem of not opening completely flat. i only realized it after gluing everything together, so it'll have to stay that way.

with the other book, i made sure the endpapers were well creased near the spine. the problem was corrected. this second book is smaller in size, so i had to trim the pages. it came with a dustjacket, so the cover remained in rather good condition. again, i used a couple of the original pages as endpapers.

front:


inside pages:


spine:


i really enjoyed this project. i will definitely make some more blank journal out of old books. the key would be to find some with interesting/amazing covers.