More Bookbinding & Bartering: Blue leather journal

Another bartering opportunity presented itself when I asked Volker (PenParadise) whether he wanted to trade some of my bookbinding work for a TWSBI Vac which I had coveted for a while. He agreed so as a part of the trade I made this journal in deep royal blue and radiant orange, some of his favorite colors.

The leather is some veg tanned and rather pricey oasis goatskin. The grain and surface are marvellous but it's much too thick for good results so there's a lot of paring to do beforehand. Luckily I own a Schärf-Fix (which is tricky to master but oh so powerful) now but even so I spent what felt like hours working on it, carefully skiving off layer after layer. It's so easy to produce holes and ruin the piece. Didn't happen here though - phew.

Inside there's chamois Karstadt System Inkjet paper with a custom printed dot grid. I hope Volker will put it to lots of use!

Handmade Leather Kindle Cover & Making of Pictures

About this time last year I got a half leather Kindle cover from Bomo Art. I loved it but it didn't hold up to daily use very well. My Kindle goes wherever I go and so does its case. It is pulled out of and stuffed back into my bag several times a day. A paper cover, even if reinforced with leather at spine and corners, is too flimsy for that so I decided a full leather cover would be better.

I measured my Kindle and cut some 2 mm cardboard for the covers and some slightly thinner one for the spine. For the front cover I made a debossed design similar to the red Carta Fiorentina journal from my last post.

In this picture the cardboard is ready to be covered with leather.

I chose thin calfskin in a very light natural tan tone but was looking for something a tad darker with an antique-ish finish. Back to dying with ink then! On my first attempt of doing that I merely painted the leather with a brush but I didn't like the durability, it really needed the Acrylic Resolene to stay put and not bleed, so I tried another method this time.
I used fountain pen ink again with good results, specifically Herbin Ambre de Birmanie.

Ink is rubbed into the leather with cotton balls (I'd advise wearing gloves)...

... let dry, then rubbed again with clear water. The dye is worked into the surface, excess dye is removed, making sure the fingers stay clean when handling the finished product.

Rinse and repeat until the results are satisfactory. As long as you don't soak the leather it will take this procedure quite well.

Leather is awesome for bookbinding but it comes with a catch: It's usually a little too thick and stiff, especially when covering the corners. To avoid bulky corners it helps to pare the leather down a bit, making it thinner and more pliable.

To do this you can use all sorts of knives and machinery. I like this little toy which is called a leather skiver:

A tool to peel leather like an apple. Works best with veg tanned leather.

Time for the results:



The inside is covered with bookcloth and marbled paper. The Kindle is attached using double-sided tape. I used bookcloth underneath it so the tape can be replaced without ripping anything.

Debossed design on the front cover

 

After the dying procedure the leather usually looks a little matte. With this one I didn't use any finisher products but it did regain some sheen with use from rubbing and hand oils.

I gave this one to my Mom meanwhile to replace her machine made cover. She especially likes the feel of the leather.

3 Takes on a Carta Fiorentina Notebook

This post is going to be picture heavy but I just had to take a lot of photos!

"Carta Fiorentina" is a range of traditional Italian paper patterns. They all have this cheerful but nostalgic vibe and I especially adore the floral patterns.
Also in my opinion they go really well with almost every shade of brown. To enhance their air of nostalgia I chose leather for spine and corners. They are approximately 21 x 13 cm - this is because the paper had an unusual format to begin with. They have about 140 pages.

I used two different leathers, natural tan calfskin dyed with ink (Diamine Chocolate Brown) and sealed with Fiebing's Acrylic Resolene and reddish brown sheepskin. Also I made some "fake nerves" for the spine.

Those two have hand sewn book blocks made of 110 gsqm grey-brown laid paper. It has nice deckled edges so I chose not to trim the edges. (Also I still don't have a good paper cutter so I'm having trouble getting straight and smooth cuts).

It was my first attempt at dying leather and if not for the Acrylic Resolene the color would bleed and rub off a lot. Since then I've tried another way to dye leather which worked out much better.

There are so many colors in the Carta Fiorentina pattern it's easy to pick one for endbands and ribbons.
The paper is a little on the rough side but it tolerates fountain pen ink pretty well.

The third take on Carta Fiorentina is somewhat different. I made a debossed design based on the floral vines and lined it with red book cloth.

It took me quite a while to finish the intricate details of the vine.

For the book block I used some Neusiedler Japan Post paper I had dyed and distressed using strong espresso. The paper is usually high white and now has a brownish tinge and some stains here and there.
The book is A5 size and has matching Carta Fiorentina endpapers. It has about 200 pages.

The bookcloth is red but with a layer of green underneath. You usually just see the red but near edges or when looking at the book from different angles you get a flash of the green from time to time.

Omas Outing

Went to meet some fountain pen friends and one of them wanted to see some Omas pens, so I grabbed them and took a family photo.

Omas Extra Lucens, Ogiva Autumno, Paragon Arco old style, Ogiva Vintage saft green

Only after I had packed them I realized I'd forgotten the Bibliotheque Nationale. Bummer.

I think the Extra Lucens is the star of the bunch though its partial transparency looks only half as great when empty.

Backdrop: My new and gorgeous pen wrap! It's still a little blotchy from the leather oil but that should have resolved itself by next week, then I'll show it in all its glory.

The Benefits of Bartering

 
A friend who is really proficient at sewing is making me a pen roll - and not just of any material but of this amazing leather!

This will be the outside of the roll, the inside will be made of somewhat thinner natural tan leather and hold 8 pens, 4 thick and 4 slim ones. There will also be a flap to protect the pen's caps from rubbing against each other. It should be ready some time this week and I'm really excited! I've always wanted to have a pen roll but the ones I saw never appealed to me.

What's best is I'm allowed to pay for this with a handmade journal. I think the pen roll should be ready some time this week and the notebook is already finished: dark brown leather with Italian peacock paper cover.

A 5 sized journal with leather back & corners

This paper is gorgeous. I have some stationery with this motif and had been looking to buy a matching journal a while back but couldn't find a convenient option. Of course I'll have to part with this one - it goes to a young woman who is a psychologist -, but I have more than enough of this paper left to make another one for myself.

Sprinkled edges. At the far left: curious tomcat's whiskers!

I pressed the book block firmly between two boards using winches, then sprinkled the edges with watercolor in various shades of blue to match the cover.

I'm not sure how these ridges on the spine are called in English. (If you know, leave a comment!) In any case they complete the nostalgic look.

Spine and corners are made of heavy grain lambskin. It's a little hard to work with as it's quite stiff but I really like the look of it on the finished book.

I love bartering like this, wish there were more opportunities for it.

Paper love - A rose is a rose leather journal

Had weird weather for the last weekends, so much time for crafty stuff and here's a another notebook bound in camel brown calfskin. My first attempt at a full leather binding. With that book I hadn't started to pare down the leather near the corners so those look a little bulky. Also the spacing between spine and front/back cover should've been somewhat larger. I'm still OK with the overall result. It has a very rugged, solid feel to it.

I picked that postcard up at a small tattoo convention, it's advertisement for a Giessen tattoo parlor. Very nice design I think!

The postcard sits in a slight indentation to give some protection from wear and tear.

A while back a bought a selection of end bands and ribbon bookmarks in all kinds of colors which was a really great find. I chose something in pale pink to match the roses.

Goes well with the pink Caran d'Ache Leman!

Not much to say about the paper, ready made book block with 144 chamois blank pages, slight laid texture, very nice paper and overall quality. Just can't go wrong with those but they become a bit boring. Some books with handmade book blocks are coming up!

A few lines a day - 5 Year Diaries

I intended to publish this post way back in January when the timing would have been perfectly suited and also took the pictures back then but then I didn't get around to it - and I don't plan to wait another 4 months so here you are!

A few years back one of my friends told me about a 10 year diary she was keeping and I found the idea intriguing. If you haven't heard of these before: They're books with one page for each day of the year, the years are lined up underneath. That way whenever you make an entry you'll be reminded of what you were up to the year(s) before.

Then in spring 2013 I bought a tiny 5 year diary by Ice Plant at RSVP Berlin. (It was this one: https://rsvp-berlin.de/de/online-shop/5/kalender_und_planer/971/-Kalender-5-Jahres-Tagebuch-5-year-diary ) I used it until 2015 but never got totally comfortable with it, A 6 size is just too tiny and the paper didn't like fountain pens much either. So despite the 5 years being far from over I got myself a "Jahresweiser".

Jahresweiser in dark red leather

That name is a little awkward even in German and would roughly translate to "year guide", though it also hints at growing wiser with the years. In contrast to the Ice Plant book it's a true calendar - in my case for the years 2015 through 2024 - and it also tells you what weekday it is and whether today's a public holiday. (So far it's only available in German though)

The differences don't end here, the Jahresweiser is also pretty large and heavy - somewhere between A5 and A4 -, bound in leather with gilded edges and features very smooth and ink friendly paper. It even comes with an extra sheet of paper to test with your pen.

It's definitely higher quality than the Ice Plant (more expensive too as it's hand made) and clearly made to keep at your desk rather than lug it around on your travels.

The only thing I don't love about it is the leather, it's okay but the finish is not to my liking. You can also buy a Jahresweiser without covers and bind it yourself and looking back that's probably what I should have done. Back then though I couldn't foresee that I would be able to tackle such a project!

You can get one at http://www.jahresweiser.de. If you prefer cloth over leather you could check out Manufactum, they sell a custom version bound in grey bookcloth.

Nice golden embossing. Can also be had in silver. There's also a cover in furnished wood.

5 year diaries are perfect for people like me who just can't manage to journal every day. For me most things run in streaks and so does keeping a journal. At times I write pages and pages, then nothing for months. It's still a nice enough pastime but the documentary value is somewhat meager. With a 5 year diary you are neither able or obliged to write a lot about your day - there isn't much room - and I usually manage to jot down a few words so blank pages are few yet.

Jahresweiser from the inside: holidays and weekdays are visible at a glance. The paper is very smooth.

If nothing in particular happened there's always dreams, books, movies, food or the weather. Weather milestones (first snow etc.) can be astonishingly interesting over the course of years.

By reading forums I found out about another type of 5 year diary and started one last winter along with the Jahresweiser: The "Q&A a day". The page setup is quite similar to a regular 5 year diary but every day asks you a question. They range from existential ("What makes you 'you'?") to trivial ("List 5 things you ate today") and plain weird ("Are you the original or the remix? Why?"). I'm far less disciplined with that one than with my regular 5 year diary but I'm still on it.

I also have to note the very nice design: embossed Kraft paper covers and gilded edges. The paper works really well with fountain pen ink.

The paper is not as smooth as in the Jahresweiser but still very nice. Haven't had any bleed through or feathering since. I exclusively use Rohrer & Klingner Salix and a very wet pen for both journals.

Do you keep a 5 or 10 year diary? If not, do you find the idea appealing?

Paper love - bookbinding

High time for a post as I haven't been here in a while, I've had a rather stressful time at work and in my free time I've been playing The Witcher 3 (which I can fully recommend btw) - so less time for pen related things! However I've had some fun with a closely pen related hobby: bookbinding. One of these things (like making soap) I'd always wanted to try and after a few attempts I have to say making soap is somewhat easier! :D

I'm not showing the very first attempts as those are more than a little embarrassing but here are some recent ones (still very dilettante I'm afraid):

These rather neat looking specimen are made with ready made book blocks. I've only made and decorated the covers plus end bands and ribbon bookmarks. It took one failed attempt to work out the right measurements for front and back covers but after that it went pretty well.

The book blocks are really neat by the way, 144 chamois colored pages with a slight vergé texture and very fountain pen friendly (they also come with lines and grid). They come with end papers so all you need to do is glue them into place. If you are located in Germany I recommend the shop Buch-Kunst-Papier! They generally have a huge range of bookbinding and general paper goodness to browse.

However for me working with ready made components is not as satisfying since I haven't made the whole thing from scratch! So I've also done some coptic binding.

All these books are A5 size by the way as this is my favorite format for journalling.
I've been fascinated by coptic bindings since I first saw them on FPN (in one of TMLee's threads I believe) as those books open completely flat. These are truly handmade books from folding and piercing the paper and decorating the covers to stitching the whole thing - including all the flaws.

There's still so much to learn, I've yet to produce the perfect coptic binding - one is wobbly, another one has irregular stitching, the third has a glue stain somewhere (in fact almost all of them have glue stains somewhere - I'm really not made for handling icky, sticky paper, also makes me remember my kindergarden days more vividly than I care for!) but whatever. It's still fun to experiment.

As boyfriend has been working with leather for quite a while (see the leather notebooks he's made for me) and we still have a rather large stockpile I've started experimenting with leather covers last week. I like leather for book covers as it's obviously more sturdy than book cloth and less prone to staining and the general grubbyness that comes with use - most varieties anyway. For this black and orange notebook - again with a ready made book block - I've used some scraps of kangaroo leather. It's amazing, super thin but firm with a super glossy surface.

It was only after taking the picture I'd noticed that the orange endband was missing - I've managed to fondle it in place by now!
The cover is from a paper pack pad I found at TK Maxx called Steampunk Florals. These papers can be pretty great for bookbinding, especially for use as flyleaves and such, because they are quite sturdy. Also this one has a glossy surface which is pretty neat for a cover, especially combined with the high sheen leather.

This is my latest attempt in coptic binding: black horse leather, bright orange yarn and ribbon bookmark. I got this postcard with the leaf lady from a dear friend several years ago and have always love the motif. The postcard sits in a slight indentation which gives some protection from wear and tear.

My go to paper for bookbinding is the System Inkjet paper by Karstadt (I believe I've referenced it several times in the past) as it is a nice ivory color, fountain pen friendly, firm and smooth at 120gsm. Also it's inexpensive which is important as I'm experimenting all the time and need at least 30 sheets for a journal.
For the leaf lady notebook I've printed a light grey 5 mm dot grid.

I love marbled paper and journals with marbled covers can be hard to come by or super expensive. However the papers per se aren't that pricey - especially when compared to Japanese Katazome - and I really like being able to use them to my heart's content. I believe the above is my favorite, especially together with the the dark red book cloth.

I've seen videos about how the marbled effect is achieved but I'm still no less than amazed by it. Maybe I'll try that myself some day too!

What have you been up to this summer? Is there any hobby stuff you've always wanted to do?

Happy New Year everyone! Also: time for a new diary.

After having recovered from the New Year's Eve celebrations now is the time to prepare for going back to work and starting a new year. It's also the time to retire last year's diary (discard or keep - what's your approach?) and start the new one.

For me it's going to be my second Bomo Art diary as I've been really happy with the one I used in 2014. 

For the cover I chose the balloon motif again but with a dark green leather spine instead of the dark red I had last year.

The daily diary is A5 sized with a thick whiteish book block and ribbon bookmark. Like last year's specimen it feels like solid and durable work and indeed my old one has held up to daily use very well.

On the inside, besides one page for every day of the year there are all sorts of useful additions like international holidays, a register section for contacts and even a world map. For a closer look check my post about it from 2013.

 Like all Bomo products it has the "BomoArt Classic" embossing on the back cover.

 Seen here with my currently favorite writer, a Danitrio Mikado! The balloons really don't get old for me. I've had them on last year's and this year's diary, a notebook and my kindle cover, all with different colored leather spines which seem to enhance different aspects of the design.

 The paper is still very thin, my guess would be 60-70 g/m2 but amazingly ink friendly. For the smoke test I wrote a few lines with my Delta Dolce Vita medium with 1.1 steel italic nib which gushes like crazy since I've given the feed a good clean with dishwashing liquid (guess I didn't rinse it well enough) so even with dryish Rohrer & Klingner Salix there is a LOT of ink flow.

The picture was taken a few seconds after writing the words but as you can see the ink is still glistening. No feathering though.

 Also no bleedthrough on the back side. Quite impressive! At work I mostly use pencils to jot down notes and appointments - quick and convenient - but also my fountain pens if I have time. No problems with the paper anyway!

 That's the pen by the way! It came with a very dry 18 k fine nib which I didn't enjoy too much so I exchanged it for a Monteverde 1.1 steel italic and it's getting a lot more use now. The exchange was easy as the nib and feed pull out with very little force needed.
The original nib was full rhodium plated so I like to think pen and nib still look nice together though a closer look will of course reveal that there's some frankenpen-ness going on here!

Which daily diary will you be using this year? Do you have an all time favorite you buy every year or do you like to experiment? Do you have a specific pen to use it with?