Beginning Bookbinding: Make a Pamphlet Stitched Travel Journal

1. Welcome to Beginning Bookbinding: Make a Pamphlet Stitched Travel Journal: Why would you want to make your own handbound book? Let me answer that. There are so many reasons. Handbinding allows you lots of artistic expression by letting you choose the cover design, choose the text paper, and the type and style of thread you'll use. You can customize each element to perfectly tailor your book to fit your vision. Because you have control over the materials, you can have the quality craftsmanship that might be missing in a mass produced book. Creating a handbound book can be a deeply personal project. You are investing time and effort into something meaningful, whether it's a journal, a sketchbook, or a gift for someone special. Hand binding is a craft that involves various techniques such as sewing, gluing, and covering, that's easy when you take it step by step. It can be a fulfilling way to expand your skill set, especially for paper people. In the end, you'll be filled with a great satisfaction as you hold the finished book you've just made from scratch. This class offers the artistic expression, the control over materials, the ability to customize your book, the expansion of your skills, and the great satisfaction with the creation of a simple pamphlet stitched book. We're going to take it a step past simple to create a handbound travel journal that has the elements that you need. I'm Suzanne, and I'm a calligrapher, bookbinder, and designer in the craft industry, and we're going to have some fun. Your project your project is to create your very own pamphlet stitched book. So let's get started. 2. Parts of the Book: Hey, there. Welcome back. I'm just going to talk a little bit about the parts of the book because I might refer to them while we're working on our book. So this is the spine over here, the opening side are called the fore edges. This is the head. This is the tail. And the inside pages altogether, like those are called the book block. And there you go. That's probably all you'll need to know. 3. Supplies You'll Need: Hi there. In this lesson, we're going to talk about the supplies you're going to need for making your little travel journal. Now, you should have all of these in your home. Now, when you look at all of these, it looks like a lot, but it really isn't start with the bone folder. Now, if you don't have one, you might like to get one because it's a really handy tool for paper crafting. And it's made of bone, but you can use other things if you need to. It's great for scoring and burnishing down folds. Now, this is a bone score. It works similarly to the bone folder, except it's got a finer point to it. Now, you can accomplish this scoring by using the end of a brush or using the end of a crochet hook. So you don't need the special bone scorer tool, but you might already have one. And in which case, you should take it out to use it. So now, this is double sided adhesive tape, and you might want that for making your pockets in your travel journal. Not completely necessary, you can use glue. Now you want a ruler. I really like one that has metric and imperial measurements on it. Now, this is an all. It pokes holes because bookbinders pierce their holes before they sew them. The type of all you want to choose for book binding is one that stays the same width along the length of its shaft and doesn't get wider as it goes to the handle. Now, if you don't own an owl, a simple thumb tack will do it's sharp and it has a little handle on it. So it will do fine for this application. The next thing you're going to need is a needle, and these are blunt needles. Bookbinders use blunt needles because they pre pierce the holes. And if you have another sharp needle, then you're going to make more holes than you need. So here's the difference between a sharp needle and a blunt needle. This is a tapestry needle, and the great thing about tapestry needles is they have large eyes. So you have a bit of flexibility in the size of thread that you use. Speaking of thread, you can choose different things to use for thread. I think I would recommend an embroidery floss for this project, not that it's the best thing to use, but it's easy to get. And you can use narrow ribbon as long as you can get it through your needle. Or you can use string. This is a little bit thick. But, I mean, that's an option. And again, as long as you can get it through your needle. Now, I would be really remiss if I didn't mention my favorite thread, and that is wax linen thread, and you probably won't have any, but you might pick some up at a craft store. I like wax linen thread because it's strong. It comes in gorgeous colors. It's a really nice weight, and it doesn't tangle because it's waxed. So if you can find some, that's awesome. Now, let's get down to the nitty gritty, the pages for our little practice book. This is just five pieces of copy paper inexpensive that you would put in your printer. And this is card stock, which is a little bit heavier. This is 65 pound card stock, and it's 8.5 by 11 or A four size. Now, although you don't need one, here's another item you might like to make, and I have a class that shows you how to make it. This is a book cradle, and it helps you pierce holes in just the right place. And I'll show you more about that in a later lesson. So here are your tools again. Make sure you download the supply list that will be in the resources section of this lesson, and we'll see you in the next lesson. 4. Folding the Pages and Cover: Welcome back. Let's get started making our little travel journal. This is our practice book. So we're going to start with those five pages I mentioned. They're just copy paper. Now, we have to fold these in half, and we could do them one at a time and then put them inside each other. But then I found over the years that putting them together as a bundle kind of makes a nice little packet. So jog those pages together, so they all line up and jog them again, hold down the four edges. Tight. And then take your bone folder, and from the middle of the fold, push out. And there we have it. We have our little packet of pages, and that is called a signature. Now, we just have to do the same thing with the cover. Now, there are two ways we can do this. This is very lightweight cover stock, so I could probably fold it just like I did with the pages. But I want to show you the alternative in case your cover stock is very thick. What we're going to do is score halfway across the cover stock. So we're going to measure whether it's in metric or imperial and mark with a pencil halfway across your cover stock, top and bottom. I lay your ruler along the pencil marks and use your bone score or your bone folder and stroke down the side of the ruler a few times. You're basically denting the paper so that it wants to fold along that scored line. Fold over the card stock so the four edges line up and hold them securely, and then burnish from the middle down in the middle up on the fold line. Now you can tuck your signature inside the cover. Just like that. And give it a jog. And now something you'll see along the four edges is that the book block sticks out past the cover. Now, you can leave it like that, or you can trim it. I'll talk about that later after we've stitched the book together. See you in the next lesson. 5. Piercing the Stitching Holes: Hi there. Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to pierce the holes that we will use to stitch the book together. Here's where we left off during the last lesson. We're going to open our book, and we're going to use a pencil to mark where the holes will go. Now, if you've done any of my other book binding classes, you'll be going, but, Suzanne, where's the template? Well, in this class, we're not going to use a template. We've opened our booklet flat, so the middle of the signature is showing, and we're going to make three marks along the fold. The first one will be halfway along the fold. And then we're going to make two more one at 1.5 " from the head and one at 1.5 " from the tail. But why at those measurements? Well, it gives you a little flexibility, and you can make these books any size you want. You just want to be a little bit closer to the head and the tail than you are to the middle. Now let's get out our hole piercing tools, whether you're using a full sized all or a baby all, they'll do the same job. When you pierce your holes, you want the holes to go right through the signature and the cover and all be lined up and be along the fold. Sometimes that's easier said than done. So I have a couple of little tricks that might help you. These next demonstrations are from another class. But you'll get the idea a good option for piercing your holes accurately is to find yourself a big old book. And I used to say to people use an old telephone book, but hey, those are hard to come by these days. So I'm opening this big, huge atlas up to the middle pages, and there's kind of a ditch in there. And we can put our signature with the template. If we have one right in that ditch, and we can pierce those holes from there. But you have to be really careful that you keep your signature and your template lined up at the head, so nothing budges, and you pierce your holes that way. Another way to pierce your holes is to find two tables that are jammed right together, and you can treat that like the ditch of the book. But by far, the best way to pierce your holes is in a book cradle. The book cradle helps you avoid this, and no one wants this. You want your piercings along the fold. This is how book cradles work. It's really simple. You place your signature in the bottom of the cradle, place your template on top, if you have one, but everything up to the end so that your cover and your signature are aligned, and then go ahead and pierce your holes straight down through the cradle right where you've pencil marked the holes. And you can see just how fast and accurate it will be. If you're using any other method, just make sure your cover and your signature stay firmly together. And there you go. How nice is that? Perfect. Okay, we're ready to go. I'll see you in the next lesson. 6. Stitching the Pamphlet Book: Welcome back. Now we get to the fun stuff. We're going to stitch our little book together. So I have chosen embroidery floss for this. It's not the best thing to use because it's not as strong as some threads, and it will wear and break over time, measure out 2.5 times the length of the spine. If you've chosen another type of thread or ribbon, you might have to go back and make your holes a bit larger because we want the thread to just fill the hole. We're going to use a single thread, and we don't need a knot at the end. And we're going to start this time by stitching from the inside. You can start from the outside, but this time, we're going to start from the inside. Make sure everything is lined up, the cover and the signature are aligned. Insert your needle from the inside and pull it through and leave yourself lots of thread as a tail. Well, maybe not quite that much. Let's pull it through a little bit more. And then head up to the hole at the tail or the head. It doesn't matter at this point. And pull the thread through and make sure it's snug. And again, you don't need a knot at the end. Move that little tail over to the side and insert your needle at the other end of the book. Flip your book over. And bring the needle up through the last hole that you haven't stitched. And then go back down to the middle hole and don't pierce the thread that you've already stitched. You want the long stitch down the middle of the spine to be straddled on either side by the two end threads. You can remove your needle now and put it someplace safe where you won't sit on it. Now the last step is simply tie a knot. And if you're a brownie, then you might remember doing the reef knot. It's also called a square knot. We're going to trap that long stitch with the reef knot. So the reef knot is right over left and under. And then left over, right, and under. And there you have it. Yeah, you want to trim the ends. And I like to leave a bit of thread and not cut the ends really short. I have a rule of thumb. It's called Never cut anything shorter than you think you can re tie. And there's your book. You've got it. You've done it. Now, I made this cute little journal a long time ago. It was for a Round Robin where it was mailed around to other artists, and they would decorate a couple of pages in it, and then it was returned to me. Very cool. It's a little variation on what we just did. And I started stitching from the outside because sometimes you want to tie on some beads or something interesting. And this kind of gives you a place to do that. So if we open it up, you can see that there is no knot right in the middle of the book, where the stitching started in the book we just made. Now, another thing I promised to talk about earlier was to trim off the part of the bookblock that showed outside the cover. And that is called creep. In case I didn't mention it before, and that is just from nesting pages inside each other. And it just happens. So if you want to cut that off, you can make a little pencil mark where the cover comes too, and then take your ruler and a knife and using multiple strokes, trim those bits off, and that's all you need to do. Now, I took mine over to my cutter and just trimmed them there. But I probably would have done a better job if I'd used an exacto knife. So there we go. You have your little book. It's all done. You can fill it. You can decorate it. You can have a whole bunch of fun with it. Now, let's think about how we could turn this into a travel journal. So I'll see you in the next lesson. 7. Choosing Paper, Cover & Thread for your Travel Journal: Hey, there. Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to choose your paper, cover, and thread for your travel journal. So can you never find anything that suits your style? Well, it depends on what kind of travel journal you'd like to have. Let's make one that works for you. Let's look at a few pamphlet stitch books that I have to get some inspiration. First, let's look at the inner pages, the book block. Do you like to sketch? Are you more an observer with words? Do you collect bits and pieces and treat your travel journal like a scrapbook? Do you paint? Do you confine all of the previously mentioned? Is this more of a memory book that won't be used daily or a book that gets well loved? All of these things are important considerations when you make your book. Before we get into specifics, let's have a little look at these books. Now, this is a tiny little pamphlet stitched book, and it's got a little shell stitched on the front, and it can be used for all sorts of little things. And here's another one, and it's actually bound with wire. Now, wire might not be the best thing to use, but it's fun in this book. Wire might cut the pages. And here's what it looks like inside. Cute little pages with some personalized artwork on the front. This is a really nice size. It's half of an 8.5 by 11 piece of paper. And it depends again on what you put inside. This is card stock pages, and you can paint on them, and some card stocks will take some watercolor. There's certainly a lot of collage in here. This is a little round Robin book that got sent from artist to artist. If you're mailing one of these around, here's a little tip. Open it up flat to the center fold and mail it that way, and you might save yourself some money in postage. Here's another sweet little book. I'm not sure which is up when I look at it from the front, but it is a leather cover. So talk about an easy way to make a cover, and it'll be sturdy. No, there we go. Pockets go this way, I guess. So there you go. There's another idea for you. Now, this is one of my favorite sizes. And you can do lots in this. It's not too big, it'll fit in anywhere. Again, this was another book for Round Robin and went all over the place, probably annoying people because it kept getting hung up on the embellishments. But what a treasure when you get it back. This is a little recipe book that I had students from one of my beginning calligraphy classes do. So they wrote out the recipes. I had it copied, and we bound it. This is a book from a workshop I attended, and the cover is Ashley Practice paper. And then the inside is a combination of all sorts of different papers. And there's a pocket in the middle. And that's what we're going to do with our book. The next book we're looking at is a little book I made for my children. And I'm not sure which is up and which is down. Oh, there we go. You might want to put something on your cover to indicate which is up and which is down. And I actually used wrapping paper for the cover, and not necessarily the best choice because often wrapping paper will bubble when you glue it to something else. A couple of little bells on the bottom makes a nice little embellishment. And our last book here is our practice book. It's all ready to go. How will you embellish it? I just wanted to show you this little book that I received a long time ago now, and it's put together with staples. Yep, staples. Now, see, you'll never have to use another staple. You can take those staples out and do a three hole pamphlet stitch in it. Now, let's talk about some inside pages that you can use. A really good one for artists would be Arch's text wove. Now, you'd buy this at an artist supply store, and it comes in big sheets. So you'll have to cut it down, and it will take ink and paint. You can letter on it, all sorts of things, and it's pretty darn tough, even though it's lightweight pages. So a pretty good choice for bookbinding. And this is just card stock. It is Nina solar White card stock, and it's often a favorite of crafters. It's white, so you can use any color on it, and it'll show true. Now, what about using black card stock? Photos show up on it really well. A lot of opaque pens show up on it really well, and it can be really fun to work with. And now, some of you might want lined pages or graph paper. Now, this is a mole skin, I believe, and it comes with the graph paper inside. Now, you could take this apart and cut down the pages to the size you want. And if you look at this more carefully, you can see it's actually a stitched book, but they've machine stitched it. We can do something much more interesting. And it's the same with ruled notebooks. You can take those apart and repurpose them for your travel journal. Now, here's something I've always meant to do and never gotten around to. This is a little photo album that I bought at $1 store, I think, and it has folded pages, and these are all pockets for photos. Now, if you take this apart, you could make a cover for it and stitch it together as a little memory photo album. How cute would that be? So keep looking for things like that. You never know what you might see. Now let's talk a little bit about covers, and I wanted to show you this. It is not a pamphlet stitch book, but why not use felt for your cover? It's beautiful. So think about that as an option. Still, in the textiles theme, I have here a piece of free motion embroidery that I never finished, but you can tell that it's going to be a book. And I just need to put a book block inside there, and I'll be good to go. What do you think? We've already talked a little bit about leather. This is very heavy leather, but it's very cool and would be nice and sturdy for a cover, and you want to cut it the right size, I suggest you go down to your local thrift store and look for an old leather handbag or an old leather skirt and buy some cheap leather. Don't underestimate scrapbook paper. Keep your eye out for beautiful papers that really appeal to you or you think it might appeal to somebody who will receive the book. Often scrapbook papers can be double sided, so that will look good on the inside of your book as well as the outside. If you go into art supply stores or specialty paper and stationery stores, you'll often find specialty handmade papers. And here are just a few of them. They're very neutral colors. You just want something that's a bit heftier than the text pages for your bookblog. There's a travel journal I used years ago, and it's a hardcover, and it's coptic bound, but it's kind of nice. It just doesn't travel all that easily in that it doesn't sneak into little spaces. But it shows you that I painted in it, I sketched in it. I glued things in it. And it was a multi use journal. That's a squashed mosquito. They were everywhere. Now the last thing we have to talk about is thread. We've already discussed that in a previous lesson, but I just wanted to add that my favorite bookbinding thread is wax linen thread. You can find wax linen thread at basket weaving suppliers, and I use four ply and two ply, mostly four ply. So, in conclusion, you're going to want to buy paper that suits the kind of travel journaling that you do, and you want to choose a cover that pleases you, and you want to choose thread that complements the cover. Okay, that's it for now. I'll see you in the next lesson. 8. Make a Small Travel Journal: Hi there. Back again. This lesson, we're going to make a cute little travel journal that'll fit in anywhere. And we're going to make it out of scrapbook paper, which is 12 by 12 paper. Scrapbook paper often comes in collections of coordinated color wise, image wise, cardstock, sometimes paperweight, paper that can be really, really beautiful. Here's the paper that I've chosen, and this will be the cover. And you should cut a cover, as well. You should cut yours 12 " wide and 6 " high. Now, this is the middle pocket piece, and you should cut it seven and a three quarters inch wide and 8.5 " high. Since this is double sided paper, in a few minutes, you'll get to decide which part of the pocket folds up. Now, here are the text pages. You're going to cut them seven and three quarter inch wide and 6 " high. Now, I've used white paper, cardstock, actually, except I had some leftover from the cover, so I thought, Well, that would make a fun page partway through the little book. So let's do that. I have seven white pages plus the little colored page. I have a printable resource sheet in this section, and you can download that and print it out so you know what size sheets you need and how many of each. When we talked about the book block earlier, I said, take the whole packet of paper and fold it together at the same time. Well, I'm going to modify that a little bit because these are thick pieces of paper. I've used 65 pound card stock for the pages. So I'm going to have you fold them in two separate packets and then nest one inside the other. Make sure the four edges line up, hold them securely, and burnish down from the middle out. Repeat with the other pages. And then nest them together. Okay, let's put those aside. Now here we have our cover, and we're going to fold this in half, four edges together, held securely. Now we can put the pages inside the cover. But, oh, look, the cover sticks way out. What are we going to do with that? Well, we're going to make a couple of flaps that can be used as pockets. So make sure that the pages are lined up with the fold in the cover, and then we're going to take a pencil, and we're going to mark where the pages come to. Now, it's safe to mark a little wider than your pages are. That's a good rule of thumb for any other book you make. But since I've given you these specific measurements for your cover, you can just measure off 2 " from the for edge and create a fold parallel to the spine. And use your bone folder to score along the edge of your ruler and then fold along the scored line and burnish it down with your bone folder. And you're going to repeat exactly the same thing on the other side. You can use your bone folder or your bone scorer for this. A couple of strokes should be enough to dent the paper. And then, look, there we go. We've got a little pamphlet book. We just have to stitch it together, and we're gonna do a few extra special things, too. Here's the little middle pocket piece that we cut. Now, which side are we going to fold up? You might have noticed that the pocket piece is the same width as the text pages. So what we're going to do is score a line along the bottom edge of the text pages, and we're going to fold up a pocket. Now, which side do we want to fold up? Hmm. Whatever side I choose, I'm sure you're saying, No, Suzanne, use the other side. I've lined the text pages up with the top of the pocket page, and I'm just going to make a mark at the bottom of the text pages. And because I've given you such specific measurements, you can measure up 2.5 " from the bottom of this pocket page. So your pocket is going to be 2.5 " deep. As before, use your bone folder up against your ruler to create score marks and then fold up along the score line. And burnish it down with your bone folder. Now, we're just missing the fold that turns it into a page that will go inside your bookblock. Simply fold it in half, just like you have every other page. Align the four edges, hold it firmly, and burnish down from the center to the outside edges. Gets a little thick there at the bottom, so just maybe give it an extra burnish. And there we have it and we can pop it right in the middle. And there we have a little book block, a little signature. And that goes right inside the cover and fits just perfectly. This is going to be so cute. Now, our next step is to stitch our little book together. You might be a little nervous about piercing holes and such thick paper and such a thick book. So what I might suggest is using some clips and securing your book together along the outside edges of the pages and holding everything together. And then you might get a bit of additional help. Now, where were we? Oh, yes. In every pamphlet stitched book, you'll make a hole right in the middle. So we know this is a six inch high book, so let's measure 3 " and make a dot. Our new book is much smaller than our practice book, which has a hole in the middle and two that are 1.5 " from either end. Now, that could make our holes very close to the middle if we use 1.5 ". So let's make it 1 " from either end. It's not too much difference, but it could make a big difference in the stability of the book. So we're going to make these dots and make them big enough for you to see and me to see 1 " from the head and 1 " from the tail. There we go. Now, because I have it and I love it, I am going to use my book cradle to make the holes, and I showed it to you before. This just makes it really fast. If you don't have one, you can learn to make one, or you can just use one of the techniques I showed you in the earlier lesson. Fold those clips in. Make sure everything's lined up. Get out your all and pier straight down through the hole. And you might have to use a bit of a drilling motion because this is really thick. And there we go, beautifully aligned. Now all we have to do is stitch it together. And there's one more thing I want to show you, too. I have my needle and I have my thread. I'm using brown wax linen thread to complement the cover, and I'm going to measure out approximately 2.5 times the spine length. Now, that's pretty generous for this style of book, but, hey, it's better than being short. We have a knot for that, but we don't want to use it for this book. So thread your needle. Now, since you've already done a book, I'm going to speed this up a bit. We're gonna start stitching from the outside this time. So away you go. Make sure you don't stitch through those other threads as you go through that middle hole again. Trap the long stitch and then tie a reef knot or a square knot. There. Now you can take your clips off. Now we have to create our pockets. And I'm using double sided tape, just two strips, one at the bottom, and one at the top. And there, not only will this pocket give the book a little more strength at the four edges, it provides you with a little pocket to put train tickets in or whatever you have that you might want to stick in there. And we're going to do that with the front and the back. And then we're going to do the same thing with the fold up pocket at the center of the book. You can use double sided tape or you can use glue. And there you have it. It's a little book. How cute is that? Doesn't have to be a travel journal. You might want to open some of the pages and make it relax a little bit more, but you'll do that by working in it, too. You'll want to trim your extra long threads or use them to add some embellishments, like maybe some beads tied on the end with some knots or who knows what else? Use your imagination. Something else you might want to add to your little journal is a belly band. And that's just to keep it closed a little more cause once you start filling it up, it's going to yawn at the fore edges, and that's okay because it looks like it's been loved. So I've cut a piece that's 12 " by 1 ", and it's out of the same scrapbook paper, and you're just gonna wrap it around, decide how tight you want it, and then overlap the belly band by about 1 ". That's probably safe. Trim it, then add some adhesive. Giving that double sided adhesive a little burnish down with your bone folder helps the release paper come off. And now you can slide your custom made little belly band onto your book. And it will hold it closed for travel. Now, any embellishments you've hung off your threads can stay below the belly band, or you can trim your threads even shorter. There you go. You've got a little travel journal, super cute, super portable. Now, let's move on to the next lesson. See you there. 9. Make a Larger Travel Journal: Hi, welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to make a larger travel journal. Now, most everything is going to look really familiar. There's just a couple of tips I want to add and maybe a few changes. So here I have all my supplies laid out. Here's my needle and thread, and this is the pocket page. And here are all my text pages. And it's a combination of Arch's text wove and some scrapbook paper that are coordinated. My cover may look black, but it's actually a very dark navy. And then I have this balloon, and I thought a balloon would be really fun on the cover of a travel journal. So I'm just going to hold off cutting that out until I have my book made and then add it at the end. So as I did with the small journal, I'm going to split the signature into two stacks of paper and fold them separately and then nest them together. There are seven pages included here, and they measure 11 " wide by 7.5 " high. You can find all the information about the supplies in the downloadable PDF in this lesson. My next step is to prepare the middle pocket page. And I'm doing that just like I did in the small journal, except I'm going to have a deeper pocket in this book. Does this all look very familiar? It should. I'm going to do something slightly different in this book, and I'm going to take out that pocket page, and I'm going to apply the adhesive along the edges before I stitch my pocket in the book. It makes it a bit easier. Okay, now we'll pop it in place, and we'll have a look. Yeah, looking good. Now, here's our cover, and we're going to fold it in half. Now, in this cover, we are not going to put any folded tabs. So we're not going to have any pockets in the cover, but that's okay. It's just a little bit different. There. Now we're getting somewhere. It's almost time to cut out this hot air balloon. Now, let's poke some holes in this book. As always, a hole goes right in the middle. And this is 7.5 ", so it'll be three and three quarter inches at the center. So we'll make a little mark there. Now it's time to decide where to put the other two holes. 1 " seems too close to the end. Let's go one and a quarter inches from either end. It's more a feeling you get. You don't want the hole too close to the end, and you don't want the hole too close to the middle. You do, however, want them evenly spaced. And by now, you know me any excuse to use my book cradle. So here I've pulled it up, and again, you can use the other techniques I showed you in an early lesson. And I'm gonna but these right up to the end and hold them in place. I'm not even gonna use clips this time. Wow. Living dangerously. Somehow, these pages are easier to pierce. That's it. Now we start stitching. Although the holes were easy to poke, I seem to be having trouble getting my needle through. There we go. That's easier. Then up to the other end and through. And again, big fight. Back through the middle hole and just make sure you don't stitch through another thread because you can't tighten it once you've stitched through a thread. Make sure everything's snug. And then you can tie your reef knot. And there we go. Yes. Now it's time to cut out that hot air balloon. When I cut out my hot air balloon, I thought it was missing something, so I mounted it on a panel of red card stock, and now it's all ready to go traveling. Or is it. What I like about these is they bend into any shape. So if you need to curl it around something in your luggage, then it's easy to do. We haven't talked about a belly band in this book yet, and it's a bit wider than the last one, so it's going to take a longer piece of paper, and you might have to attach two pieces together. But there's the elastic alternative. And this is what I bought, but there's no reason why we can't make one. It's simply a piece of elastic held together with a big bead. And it will just slide over your journal. You can adjust it so it fits nicely. And it will keep your journal from expanding and things falling out and keep it from catching on things that you might be sliding it by in your luggage. Now, here's a nice bright one. It was designed for a planner, and it's too big. But what you could do is just put a couple of stitches in there to cinch it up or add a bead if you've got a big enough one. There's all sorts of solutions when you start thinking about it. So now you know how to make a three hole pamphlet stitch travel journal in different sizes, too. Now, I've just got a couple of more things to talk about, so we'll see you in the next lesson. 10. 5 Hole Pamplet Stitch: Hey, fancy meeting you here. We're back. And this is a bonus lesson, and I'm going to show you how to do a five hole pamphlet stitch. Now, this is just like the practice book we did at first, four pages, though, and a nice pretty cover on it, and it's already folded into a signature. So we just need to start by marking the holes. Since this is a five hole pamphlet stitch book, we're going to need five holes. So, of course, we start with the one in the middle. Always start with the one in the middle. Now, how are we going to space these other holes? Well, let's start by going in three quarters of an inch from either end. And we can mark those. Making a five hole binding will help the stability of the book. Since we want our holes evenly spaced, we need to divide the distance between the center hole and that outer hole in half. And that is going to be one and three quarter inch from the center hole. Now, if you're going to do a lot of these, you might want to make yourself a template like I did here. Really crude, easy to do. It just shows you the measurements and the spacing of the holes. And then my favorite thing, piercing holes. So but everything up to one end and go ahead and pierce your holes. And that's it. That one's done. Now we just need to stitch it together. So, as usual, we're going to start with the middle hole. Come through to the inside. I decided to start on the outside for this book. And leave it a little tail and then go up to the next hole. And now where do we go? Well, we're gonna go up to the hole at the end of the book. So it's almost like you're making a running stitch and snug it up and come up through the next hole. Go back through it again. Make sure you don't stitch through the thread. Now we're gonna miss that middle hole just like we did in the three hole pamphlet. And we're gonna go down to the next hole. Pull it through. Make sure it's snug, but not too tight. You don't want to rip the holes out. And then to the other end of the book. Okay, now, we've got a fight going here. We've got a thread that wants to double up, but we're not doing that. Okay. Through the next hole. Oh, big fight. There it is. Snug it up, and then back through the middle hole, being careful that we're not piercing any other threads. So now you should have two tails on either side of that long stitch. And then just go back inside your book and check and make sure all the stitches are snugged up. And then you can do your reef knot. Right over left and under, left over, right, and under. Take your needle off, put it someplace safe, and fold your book back up and decide, Are you just gonna trim those tails off or are you gonna do something interesting? And that's what the inside should look like. So now you're a master at the five hole pamphlet Stitch. How about we try the seven hole pamphlet stitch. I'll see you in the next lesson. 11. 7 Hole Pamplet Stitch: Okay, I have another bonus lesson for you. And this one is to make the seven hole pamphlet stitch. And what we're going to do it in is a slimline card. Now, slimline cards measure 3.5 " by 8.5 ". And they're designed to go inside a number ten business envelope. Oh, look what's in here. How did that get in there? Okay, it has two pieces of card stock, and it has a text weight paper insert. And I'm going to use black thread on this so that it stands out. And hopefully you can see the stitching really well. And that's how it goes into the envelope. So let's get started. As always, we start with the middle hole. Now we're going to do something completely different. And because we have so many holes, we're going to mark our holes 1 " apart. So we need three on either side of the center hole. And again, you can make yourself a little template for this if you're doing a whole bunch of them, like for your Christmas cards. Now that we have those all marked, let's slide the card into the book cradle so we can pierce the holes. But them all up to one end. There we go. All three layers and pierce the holes. Now we're ready to start stitching. So let's start stitching from the outside. Middle hole. You know, that lighter text weight paper might bend a little bit, so you have to keep your eye on its position. You could use clamps for this. It might help you a bit more 'cause it's a lot of holes to stitch. So up to the next hole. And we're going to do, again, what's kind of like a running stitch. Oh, I have a little helper. Now, you'll just have to excuse me while I get rid of him. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah. Okay, we're up at one end of the book. It's not really a book. It's a card. And we're gonna go back through the hole we were just at making sure that we don't stitch through the thread. And snug things up before you move on. Don't pull really hard. Firm. And then to the next hole. Oh, yes, that happens sometimes. Remember when we did the three hole pamphlet, there seemed to be a lot of excess thread. Well, now that we're doing seven holes, there doesn't seem to be quite as much thread because as we have more holes, we use more thread, and we're going to miss that middle hole and go up to the next hole working your way to the head. And treat it just like you did the other end of the pard. Normally, I don't let students flip their books around much, but this is a little different. Continue stitching just like you have done in all the other books until you're back to the middle. Keep checking to make sure your stitches are snug. You can straighten them a little bit if they're kind of out of kilter. Back through the middle hole, making sure you've got a tail on either side of that long stitch. And then you can do your reef knot. I'm going to trim my ends on this card just to make it a little neater and then fold it up and have a look. Nice. It looks great. It looks special. Like it was handmade, especially for someone. And there you have it. Now you're an expert at seven Hole Pamphlet Stitch. I have another bonus lesson for you. So we'll see you there. I 12. Important Stuff to Take With You on your Travels: Welcome back. Now, I'm not sure I'd call this so much a lesson as more some suggestions. We've been talking about making a travel journal. So once you get your travel journal made, are you gonna take it with you, are you gonna fill it up later? If you're gonna take it with you, maybe you want to take some supplies with you. If you're a writing person, you probably just want to take a pen. But if you're an artist, you might want to do something else. Like take some fun art supplies. Now, it kind of depends too on what kind of traveling you're doing. If you're going someplace to stay and relax and you're not moving around a lot, then you can take more. But if you're gonna be moving around a lot, you probably want to go simple. So I have some simple ideas for you. So here are the two sizes of travel journals that we've made. And look, this is a pencil case, but both travel journals would fit inside it. It's kind of fun to go shopping for a pencil case while you're traveling because like this one, I bought in Greece, and it has little Greek letters all over it, which makes it really special to me. So let's move these little travel journals aside, and we'll have a look at what I have in my pencil case. If you're a calligrapher, you probably want some calligraphy supplies. Now, a felt marker is a really good thing to have because you don't need ink. Parallel pen is a wonderful tool, but it does need ink, and it could leak. What's next in my little bag of tricks? Well, the humble pencil. But I'm going to take a mechanical pencil, not necessarily this one. But the thing about a mechanical pencil is you don't need a pencil sharpener. Not really an art supply, but a really handy little thing to have is a little pad of post it notes because you never know when you're gonna need to add a note to your journal. And then of course, you need something to sketch with. And these are pigma pens, and I have them in a couple of different sizes. And the thing about those is they're waterproof. So if you spill your coffee on your journal, your artwork isn't going to be totally wrecked. And the last thing I might suggest is a little watercolor travel kit. They usually come with a little brush, and it could be a water brush, and the lid can serve as a palette. What can be really handy for the painters is one of these aqua brushes. They come in all sorts of different sizes and tips, and the handle is filled with water, so you actually don't have to have water with you. So that wraps up my minimalist art supply kit for travel. So what will you take with you? Whatever it is, just make sure you have lots of fun. 13. Final Thoughts & Next Steps: Thanks so much for joining me in this beginning bookbinding class. I hope you've enjoyed it, and you've learned something new. If you've never done any bookbinding before, you've learned a lot more than you think you have. So I hope you join me in other bookbinding classes that I offer. Bookbinding is such a great way to express your creativity. Handbound books are a little bit of yourself, and they make fantastic gifts because they're so easy to personalize. And remember, pamphlet stitched books are not just for travel journals. They can be wonderful cards, memory books, or simply a way to keep your practice pages together. There's one last little tip that I'd like to share with you. Now, we haven't talked about making books from watercolor paper. That's because if you keep bending watercolor paper along the fold, it will eventually break and split. So here is a good solution to that problem. All you have to do is cut a piece of your watercolor paper slightly smaller than your journal page. Trim one of your pages into a little tab. And adhere the watercolor paper to the tab by using glue, or you could even stitch it in, which would be really fun. So now that you're familiar with all these cool aspects of bookbinding, are you ready to do some more? I hope I see you in other classes. I really enjoy teaching bookbinding, and I hope you love learning it. Thanks again for joining me in this class, and we'll see you next time.