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Designing my ideal planner as an excuse to play with bookbinding
Intro:
Intro:
I got some bookbinding tools when I was making tiny books for my tiny free library project, and I've been looking for excuses to practice my bookbinding skills.
So, I decided to make my ideal planner pocket-sized. Currently, I have "planner-stuff" covering about a quarter of my desk:
a dot journal that I use for weekly stuff,
a habit tracker page for my habits,
other miscellaneous papers.
I am planning a month-long trip later in the year and would like a single compact notebook that could serve all three purposes to take with me.
I've been handwriting my week out in my dot journal like this.
And I've got my habit tracker taped to the desk so I remember to fill it in.
After much trial and error, I combined the two into a notebook spread that looked like this, plus some space for notes or doodles. I made everything quite a light grey so it would feel less prescriptive.
You can find it in Canva here if you want a base to make your own. (Note that it is laid out to print with three pages. Save the first two identical pages as a PDF to print double-sided for all your inner pages. Print a single copy of pages 2 and 3, double-sided, to use as end pages - they have a blank for the front and one for the back.)
Key things to remember when making a notebook spread:
Make sure your pages meet at the actual center of the page.
Don't put things outside the margin line, or the printer won't be able to print them.
Getting this to print right took a lot of tries!
The final spread ended up being a touch under half a page in size.
A substantial improvement from this spread!
Since each letter-sized page had two weeks on the front and two on the back, I decided to print 13 pages, giving me 52 weeks on the inner pages. I then printed one more page with three more weeks and blanks for the end pages, which meant that in the end, my notebook had 55 weeks: more than enough to keep me going for a whole year.
I cut each page in two.
I folded each page.
I combined them into four signatures of seven pages each (note the blank front page!).
I sewed the signatures together, following this YouTube tutorial by The Preservation Lab.
After that, I got really engrossed in the task and forgot to take any more pictures until I was done. Here's what you missed:
First, I glued another piece of paper around the front, spine, and back of the bound signatures. This looks neat and gives something to attach the cover to.
Then, I cut a cover out of construction paper and carefully creased it to fit my pages.
I glued the cover to the front and back of the book, carefully NOT getting any glue on the spine or spine cover (this unconnectedness on the spine helps it open flat).
Finally, I trimmed the edges flush, making sure I was leaving margins inside.
It ended up looking great!
Each spread has all I need for the week.
And it is substantially smaller than my old planner.
Final thoughts:
Bookbinding is so satisfying! The hardest part of this one was designing the inner pages. If I were making a lined or plain notebook, it would be a piece of cake.
I did realize MUCH too late that I put in about three pages near the end of the planner upside down. I should still be able to use them, and it's a nice reminder that the planner is handmade.
I will likely doodle all over the yellow cover eventually. I may also need to order some finer G2 gel pens since I'll be writing small.
In the future, I will be binding more books. I see scope for making gifts, playing with cool things like marbling and designing covers, and also the opportunity to turn some of my paperback favorites into lovely hardcover or cloth-bound beauties.
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