Anybody make their own custom journals/notepads?

[TonyJones]

Howdy!

I'm in the space of mind at the moment to make my own Fauxdori for work and maybe another for personal use. The plan is to have an A5 sized cover with at least 3 A5 inserts; a lined journal, a 7 day per page calendar and a note/misc journal.

Only problem I'm having is using the internet properly to find pre-designed templates to print off and make my own journals. The calendar one I find most difficult. I can find full A4 sized ones, and full A5 sized ones, but not an A4 sized one that folds into an A5 size journal if you get what I mean.

Anybody have any experience of making their own, or know a place to find printables?

Many thanks!:rockon:

[Kurt S]

I'm not sure if they will have exactly what you are looking for, but have you tried http://diyplanner.com/ They do have quite a few templates.

[Sinister Scribbler]

Mylifeallinoneplace.com has several templates of various sizes. What you're looking for might be there.

[Bling72]

The jury is out for me, as far as the journals go. Ok guilty as charged. I have recently purchased a lot of the Emblelished Manuscripts range from the PaperBlanks company. please take a look under the paper section, my post and scans on these.

They are very beautiful and price range between $18 to $45 (depending on size and type), lined or unlined paper. When you write on the paper, it sounds like you're writing with a feather/fountain pen on a scripture, it sounds excellent and loud, but
not scratchy. It sounds like you're writing something important, regardless on what you're actually writing.

I see that the paper that you write on is far more important part of the journal than the cover. the cover can be the nicest made in the world, but once you write on all the pages, that's it you cannot write into it anymore.

There goes it's practicality. However a filofax kind of design, some of the exterior are some of the worlds finest materials, Leather or not leather. And all you have to change is the writing paper.

Personally I find the writing paper far more important for many reasons.

1. The quality, the type, and the colour/design of the paper you write on can match your mind-set, or what you intend to write, or lift you, or motivate, or inspire you to write your finest/profound thoughts, or you can make it VERY personal.

2. If you grow weary of the paper you are using, you can simply take it out and replace the pad with one of another brand, type, colour, writing surface, to also match the occasion

3. If you choose a lovely fantastic cover that will never change, only the pads inside needs to be changed.

4. You have the advantage of saving a lot of space storing different writing pads instead of different journals where hard covers when stacked up all become heavy and too thick.

So what if you choose the filofax option (where you can exchange the writing pads) - what writing paper pads do you have ?

1. Any normal standard white writing paper (lined or unlined) which is cheap and you can use for basic unimportant scribbling
2. G.Lalo paper which is paper manufactured from France, more than 100 years this company has been around, beautiful paper made form part cloth, ink dries instantly, thicker paper. Many colours, A4, A5, writing sets, envelope sets
3. Fiorenza paper - made from Florence, made from the raw materials directly from the villages, it is writing on teflon, the smoothest paper I have ever written on. Even lovlier using a nice fountain pen. Beautiful cream coloured paper, A4 and A5
4. Quill Metallic Board - this paper makes any ink look nice if you change the angle from what you look at, it's chamelion paper. Green, red, orange, yellow, every colour.

Check the reviews I did with the inks and papers in the forums. I have many samples of various inks on these papers.

Any questions, please feel free to PM me in private if you need any more info on these papers.

Lovely option to have a nice Mont Blanc cover and change the pads to any of the 4 pads mentioned above.

[TonyJones]

Thanks for your suggestions guys.

Kurt and Sinister, I've had a look on both of those but can't seem to find anything I like, but I'll keep on looking.

Bling, thanks for your post. My intention is to have lots of interchangeable a5 booklets because I do a lot of note taking, a work journal and much more. To me the Fauxdori is the more attractive compared to filofax, I just can't seem to get on with them. Having a notepad I can remove and store for future reference that folds closed is a lot more agreeable than loose filofax sheets.

The intention is printing my own stuff on nice paper because I love nice paper :) will check out your suggestions.

[Bling72]

Hmmm no the paper I mentioned is not recommended for printing. I'll tell you a sad story...

I went to a shop we have in Australia called "Officeworks". It is a chain of stationary and office furniture that has very competitive pricing.

They don't sell the top quality luxury items, but decent mid range quality.

I was looking for specials on some of the paper that they had, and the staff told me that they wouldn't recommend some of that higher quality paper for printing.

About everyone now is looking for paper to print, not to write on. That is just the way it is.

That's a complete shame, as if the art of hand writing and calligraphy is a dying art.

Now why is that ? Are we all getting too lazy to write to people with a pen anymore ? The only thing we write now is to sign documents or to write messages on sticky notes.
Very unfortunate really.

I assume children still learn to hand write, but about 99% of them will just pick up an iPad, iPhone, tablet item by the age of 3 and surf the net for any answers they need.

They got it wrong, it's not 'smart-phones, smart-devices'. It's really dumb-phones, why is that ? I lost count about 80% of people who work in an office simply are unable to cope if they lost
their devices, or if the electricity went out.

There is more of an emotional connection when using hand writing. The correct way is to run a paperless office, there is practically no need to have anything printed unless you work in finance, records management, or planning-building.

I personally found calligraphy fun, and I would need a lot of paper and practice, to improve my hand writing. When my hand writing becomes good, it would be rather nice to get paid to write nice passages since I am very good with words.

Pick up a pen buddy, find out how lovely and silky the paper is. Put the paper in your printer, it will damage it. It's rather thick, and worse, it's expensive per page.

[TonyJones]

The nice paper would be used for my daily work journals and note taking and left completely untouched by a printer, so fear not!

I get what you mean about the dumb-phone society we live in, the company I work for is introducing iPhones and iPads to cut down on paper use and bring all of the rules, standards, technical bulletins, special instruction notices and a myriad of other paper based work. It's a clever, ergonomic and, if implemented properly, efficient system. But at the end of each day I like to write a journal of my work activities of the day. I have a hard copy of what I did that I can look back on in 5-35 years time and remember what I did with whom and where. It's a combination of ass covering and historical records in case I need to know when something was done or what I did on a particular day, or if anything worthy of noting happened like an accident or close call.

I'm bored of writing on normal paper in a dull notebook, so I'm on a mission to make something I find aesthetic to look at and pleasurable to write on :)

[7188photo]

I'm making my own books, but printed inside (like this here http://www.holgerferoudj.com/store/?product=white-snow-on-black-ice, no empty notebooks.

Have you considered making a calendar layout yourself? Shouldn't be too difficult and you can make it exactly the way you want :)

[earthdawn]

Well if you don't fall asleep watching it.... I did make a video of just how easy it is to make your own journals with whatever you have laying around.
I wanted to show people that with just the most bare essentials you can make some great journals in any size with any paper you prefer.

http://youtu.be/lhd_2zu2D04?list=UU5RdWMwO5ejwenafuCwyhqg

[caribbean_skye]

Wish I had seen this before I made mine. Much like yours my first stitches were an inch apart but i started stitching from the middle, going to one end, back to the top and finishing in the middle. I may have to make another as the passport sized i made were just too small for my normal uses. Thanks for sharing this.

[Plume145]

What sorts of keywords have you been trying so far? I do a lot of customizing stuff, and there's been a lot of occasions where I've spent ages chasing my tail trying to find something or other (template, how-to, product, whatever) with no result because I just hadn't hit on the right keyword combination yet. And when I do, I'm spoiled for choice lol. Could it be something like that? I know there's boatloads of resources to make your own planners - I'm into that myself atm so it's fresh - and also that there is absolute crowds of you midori nuts ;) There's bound to be some overlap, right?

Failing that you could go all-handmade - drawing your own lines, adding details with stencils and/or stamps - but that's pretty different in terms of method and time commitment compared to what you want, which is to just print it out, so I won't get into that. I'm just mentioning it to say that if you have your heart set on a planner made ahead of time (instead of something like a bullet journal type of thing) but can't find the printables, don't lose hope, there's more than one way to scan a CAT ;)

[KrazyIvan]

I'm toying around with some ideas. They involve new leather and recycled bank books.

http://instagram.com/p/sPwrEQiDAt/

http://instagram.com/p/ryMbjPiDJc/

[Bogon07]

I'm toying around with some ideas. They involve new leather and recycled bank books.

http://instagram.com/p/sPwrEQiDAt/

http://instagram.com/p/ryMbjPiDJc/

KI, Your first one came out really well and those bankbook covers look extremely interesting. :thumb:

[snedwos]

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/09/10/5ara2asa.jpg

3 hours with a Rhodia R pad and SeaLemon's YouTube channel.

Not bad for a first attempt, but I would have like my stitching to have been tighter. Next time...

[Savitsky Designs]

New guy saying hello :)
Here's some of my work with fieldnote / moleskin / a5 journal covers! Made from Horween leather / Exotic hides / American Bison
http://i948.photobucket.com/albums/ad323/ericsav/0c38ff8687daff8fa86abbfef81c5bd2_zps3f37be61.jpg
http://i948.photobucket.com/albums/ad323/ericsav/36cb036f55255db88c6fad66eb01ff9a_zpse35e7693.jpg
http://i948.photobucket.com/albums/ad323/ericsav/9fd73216b2ac228a110e327a22a0fb6a_zps7198ce35.jpg
http://i948.photobucket.com/albums/ad323/ericsav/43eb9e0374d953efe14370375a7901e8_zps1c12fda4.jpg
http://i948.photobucket.com/albums/ad323/ericsav/974e60f1bae395c1982432df143e96dd_zpsc430eafb.jpg

[Chrissy]

Wow! Very impressive. If you ever consider making one for sale for someone else, please let me know. I would be talking delivery next summer in the US, so no rush.

[Savitsky Designs]

Thanks! I do offer these for sale Chrissy :) I'd love to offer my work to the group. You can check out everything I've done so far here on my Instagram account.
http://ink361.com/app/users/ig-1397517012/savitsky_designs/photos

[Chrissy]

Thanks. I've bookmarked it for when I next visit the US