Book 309-314 - Pocket Notebook Collection - Moleskin Style - Running Stitch Single Signature Binding

Here's a collection - six neat little pocket notebooks. I got this idea when I noticed sellers on etsy were buying classic little Moleskin journals and simply decorating the covers with drawings or stamped art. I heard that voice in my head saying, "Those are pretty simple. I can make those in a jiff."

But of course, I don't do truly simple very well. So I spent a few hours trolling through my thousands of image files looking for what to put on the covers, sizing them, cropping them, playing with the colors and contrast. I think I came up with quite a range of styles.

I printed the images on letter-sized card stock, two images per page, so each notebook ends up 5 1/2"x4 1/4", more or less. I folded text-weight paper into a single thick signature, creasing it very well, then trimmed the fore-edge to get a clean edge. I punched holes 1/2" apart all down the spine and sewed the signature to the cover with a running stitch, down the length then back up again so that the stitch line is solid.

I creased the whole thing again very well, rounded the corners with an X-acto knife, then put them under heavy weights overnight to crease and flatten them even more.

These are actually pretty neat little notebooks. After showing them to Allen and a couple of other friends, the general consensus was that the pulp fiction cover ("Women in Crime - I had Nothing to Lose but my Virtue") was the best. I have lots more of these pulp images so I'll probably make a bunch of these to sell. They're fast and cheap to make so they should sell well.