A sweet journal creation

I have been having so much fun lately taking apart the Lamali Collection journals and reusing the paper to create different and unique sized journals, whilst still being able to use the cotton rag (or grapeseed) paper I absolutely love.

My latest journal creation came together so quickly when I took apart an old 2024 calendar that my mum gifted to me to use in my journals. As I did it, I realised I could use the stand it came with that was essentially made of book board in order to create a one-of-a-kind journal.

This journal has 4 signatures giving me a total of roughly 48 pages to work with. The size is slightly smaller than A5 which will be fun and unique to work in. I’m also excited to try more of a landscape portrait as the vast majority of journals that I’ve worked in have been portrait.

I visited my brother who lives in Melbourne at the start of August and while I was there I signed up to Get Messy and binged all the bookbinding videos on their site. After doing this, I was immediately inspired to visit a local fabric store - Spotlight - and pick up some sweet red gingham fabric and also some canvas (future post incoming with that journal!).

I decided to add grommets to the journal so I could tie some ribbon once the journal gets chunkier as I’ve found with my recent ones the chunkiness has become a bit problematic.

I was heavily inspired by Caylee Grey’s journals - she has a beautiful collection of handmade journals - a combination of repurposed old vintage books and journals created entirely from scratch. I absolutely love the way they look on her shelf and have been so inspired this year to try different bookbinding techniques and journal DIY’s.

Caylee Grey’s Book Stack

This specific binding technique was something new for me to try - I didn’t know if it would work out well but I absolutely love the way it came out. I’m unsure of the official name of this type of stitch, but based on how it felt whilst binding, I would call it a criss-cross binding technique. I weaved my way down, criss-crossing between the set of holes for each pair of signatures.

The deer patch on the cover and the ribbon were both found on Temu.

Cannot recommend making your own journal enough! It is so fun and motivating to be able to capture your memories in a book you handmade all by yourself. If you give it a try, please let me know & share some photos.