Diary

I was having a hard time coming up with gifts for Boyfriend for his birthday, because I knew he was planning on serving an LDS mission soon, and I wanted to make sure he could take it with him. I don't have any brothers to ask, and all of my guy friends/cousins that were LDS were still on their missions, so I was kind of on my own to come up with something. I decided that I could make him a personalized diary/sketch book for while he was away, because 1. journaling is recommended 2. Boyfriend is an amazing artist.
      I learned how to do this in my English class senior year; but here's a tutorial I found that's pretty similar, in case you are like me and need pictures to do stuff right. At the time, I already had most of the work done because I had been making a book for myself- but the basic process is:

Things you need:

 25 sheets of normal printer paper
7 thicker/card stock sheets (inside)
2  decorative (card stock) sheets (outside)
book board or stiff cardboard
glue or modge podge
scissors or paper cutter
weights or books
needle
floss or waxed thread
ruler
pencil

 

Outside



1. Measure and cut your book board or cardboard so it will be just slightly bigger than your book (fold a piece of paper in half for reference. )

 

2. Measure your outside paper to be about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch bigger all the way around then your book board. cut little triangles out of the corners of the paper so that you can fold it down flat around the book board. Glue it all down

 



 

Inside

1.Take the 25 sheets of paper and ONE AT A TIME fold them in half. Make sure you have a good, strong crease

2. Once the sheets are folded separate them into five stacks of five.
3. One stack at a time,  slip the folded papers inside one another to create a booklet. You should now have five booklets, or "signatures".
4. Take five of your inside card stocks and repeat step one. Slip one signature into each of your folded card stock pieces.
5. open each signature up, with the "spine" facing down. Measure and mark four holes  down the length of the crease.
6. using your needle, poke holes on the marks, making sure to go all the way through and that the holes are as even as possible for all of the signatures

7.Stack all the signatures on top of each other so that the holes line up.

8. Take your top signature, and push the needle through the first hole.
9. push the needle though the bottom hole of the second signature, and do the reverse pattern, make sure that on the two middle holes the stitch is always on the OUTSIDE so that you can see the thread running between the middle holes when the signature is closed. The other stitches should be inside the book.

10. Continue doing this, making sure that both top and bottom are secured to each other on every signature.

11. Cut your threads. At this point, you can leave the book this way, or you can make it look the way I did. This is a picture of the spine of mine. The top and bottom of yours should look the same, but the middle will be just long strands without the weaving. Mine is just a simple weave, but you can find anything you want and do more complicated and cool versions- or you can be simple and make a spine to fit it instead.

12. To finish the book, take your two cover pages and glue them to the first and last pages of your book. let sit for a couple day (press under large, heavy books for a better seal)

 

13. Now you are free to decorate. this is how mine turned out.