30 Days of Creativity - #8, #9 and #10

Sounds easy doesn't it? Make something everyday for 30 days. Sheesh! (Note: My posts went into a hiatus because my images stopped uploading, but now they are working again).

The Moleskine-like Notebook Project

I love my 32-page Moleskine notebook. Is that pronounced like "skin" or like "skyne"? I don't know. I've seen several described projects for making various kinds of notebooks. I had previously stashed away some materials with which to make one, so today is the day I begin.

Figure 1. Notebook cover cut from an old grade book

I began by tracing the outline of my trusty Moleskine onto a piece of vinyl-like plastic materiel I salvaged from a no-longer-used teacher grade book. In a world of computer grade-keeping does anyone use those anymore? It was probably several months ago I was cleaning up and found it and immediately recognized that that material was ideal for making a notebook cover.

After tracing the shape I cut it out with scissors and free-handed the rounding of the corners. Looks okay!

Using the same Moleskine original cover I layed out a pattern for the pages on a piece of ghost grid archival graph paper for scientists and engineers that I had purchased at an Edward Tufte seminar several years ago. Good stuff that.

Figure 2. The cover material, paper and a Moleskine notebook
to use as a model.

Cutting the paper was tricky because it is hard o get them all the same size when cutting free-hand, and the edges get sort of rough when trying to cut too many at once with less-then-sharp scissors. I have no paper cutter. Again I free-handed the rounding of the page corners, with less than stellar success but I am not done yet!

Figure 3. Drilling the binding holes.

After putting the pages and the cover together I set it up on  drill press and drilled holes for the string to pass through for the binding. I used some black hemp cord coated with beeswax and a curved needle to run the thread through the holes. This comes out looking quite similar to the Moleskine binding, but the hemp I used is a bit thicker. A thinner hemp cord would work better.

All in all, it is a pretty reasonable substitute for a Moleskine and I think it will serve well as a highly portable pocket note keeping device.

Figure 4. Sewing the binding with waxed hemp cord.

Figure 5. The notebook compares well with a real Moleskine.

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