Quick DIY Journal

I don't typically enjoy doing rush jobs. For one I'm never satisfied with the end product but when someone asks for your help to craft something for a college final project it's rather hard to say no.

For this one I was asked to handmake a journal-come-photo album for said person. I had approximately a night and a half to do it all so I didn't take that many pictures along the way. I've done handmade bound books for BJD sized things before, so it was simply a matter of applying the same things at a bigger scale.

I started off with maybe 24 pieces of A4 paper all folded into half. I think we ended up with a little extra but I don't remember the final page count. We split the amount into half and stabbed holes into the area which would be the spine and had them sewn together to make the binding. After that I had applied glue to the spine area so it'll hold (its a blend of PVA glues) and left it to dry overnight.

In the mean time, I got to the cover. Normally I'd use cloth for the cover or wrapping paper because it's simply more malleable but I was supplied with this thicker paper with a texture so I just went with it. The cover is essentially just this and some mounting board for strength. I also folded and glued it in with the same PVA glue because it was fairly light (and I didn't expect people to be banging it around) and then flattened it to dry overnight as well.

 Then there was the matter of the spine itself. I had forgotten that you're supposed to put in the spine first before gluing up the cover (silly me and my lack of practice) so we ended up doing it the other way around, where we'd glue the spine ON the cover instead. Frankly I wouldn't recommend doing this either because its honestly not very strong but there wasn't time to try again with a new book =\

Before gluing it on, I had sewn the sides of the spine's fabric (used darker thread at request) but since I kinda suck at handsewing it ended up looking kinda ugly. And it turns out our initial measurements for the spine and the cover was totally wrong too, it had bits jutting out at the bottom. But since we were running out of time and the person who wanted it was okay with the bit at the bottom (it wouldn't affect the grading) we just went with it.

Here's the end product. It's not bad for a rush job but it's not something I'd like to try again given the timeframe I had. We spent the next hour or so painting frames into the inside of the book with paint (it was a pain as well, because the paper wasn't thick enough to handle markers) but overall the 'commissioner' was quite satisfied with the results.