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Video-Workshop: How to make a fountain pen-friendly notebook yourself

I have been trying very many pocket notebooks. Some of them were okay. Most of them sucked when it came to taking fountain pens/ink. At some point I just got tired of it all and thought to myself: Why constantly spending 3 bucks on average on a notebook with insufficient quality, when there is great paper out there that I maybe could just make into notebooks myself?

A word and a blow! I got me some good ole’ Rhodia paper of which I know is great, a couple of good tools, and made my own notebooks – a habit that I’ll probably stick to for a very long time to come! Why? Well, to cut a long story short:

  • I can make my own notebooks, whenever I need them, no shipping and shopping
  • I can make any size (A7, A6, A5 …), cover color (black, grey, yellow, or even use the IKEA catalogue as a cover …), paper (Tomoe River, Rhodia/Clairefontaine, spiral bound notepad-paper, watercolor paper …) and ruling (dot grid, lined, squared, plain, graph …) that I want/need – rounded edges or square
  • One notebook takes me around 5 minutes to do and costs me about a hamburger.

I guess this shall suffice.

Before we hop straight into the video-tutorial, let me quickly share the list of stuff I use in the video itself for your convenience. I then hope the video will be helpful and that you enjoy watching it!

Tools and materials used in the video-tutorial below

Disclaimer: When I had the idea of making notebooks myself and also shooting a video-tutorial on Scrively about it, I contacted Dahle and told them about my idea. They immediately were in favor of this format and generously provided me with the tools mentioned above in order to try my hands on that whole thing. I am grateful for that. Sure thing: you can replace the paper, cover material or any other tool with whatever you have at hand and fits your bill or the purpose. This is just a list of the stuff that I now tend to use.

Last but not least, in the course of my research for this tutorial I also stumbled across a number of other peoples ideas. One that I particularly liked was Ben W. Fey’s tutorial. He uses slightly different tools and a more creative approach, so I thought I share this with you as well, so you can make the best of two worlds. I have asked Ben if I may share his tutorial in this space here, and he was okay with it. Many thanks!

Now, let’s get down to the biz!

Video-Tutorial

Timecodes:

  • PreTalk: Why make your own notebooks: 00:00 – 04:12
  • Tools and materials I use: 04:13 – 07:05
  • Making the actual notebook step-by-step: 07:06 – 17:15

Picture Gallery

Click on the photos to enlarge.

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