Diaries 2011 – All Finished!

2011 Diaries for Christmas Gifts

Well, last week this is what was on my desk:

Three book blocks, ready to bind,

and a selection of fabrics, ready to make into bookcloth for covers.

But the diaries were finished in time for Christmas, wrapped and given as gifts!



  

You may remember I posted about making this leather-covered diary, for my friend Su?

I added these three more to my tally…

 




Black tussah silk cover, with raspberry tussah silk quarter binding and decorative end-papers.  Made for Debbie.

 




Red-sprigged cotton bookcloth cover, with raspberry tussah silk quarter binding and red end-papers.  Made for Mandy.

 

 

Blue, William Morris Iris design cotton bookcloth cover, with yellow/red cotton quarter binding and cornflower blue end-papers.  Made for my dear Auntie Kate.  

The cotton was woven with golden thread one way and red the other, so I fringed the edge slightly and didn’t fold it, to give a nice effect.

They came out really well and I am very proud of them!

I will definitely make some more books with this kind of binding – journals next I think - but I will plan for 2012 diaries, which I will start making in August next year, so I can have a number of them ready to put in my Etsy shop and some for Christmas gifts also!

I really enjoyed the whole process of making these, even though it was rather tricky to work out the diary printing.  It’s not simple to print the pages, as you can’t just print the whole diary as one set of pages to fold over – it would be too thick. 

There were four seperate sections to each diary, where the pages had to run in order once they were folded.  This means that the first page in a-section contained the Friday/ Saturday/ Sunday/Notes pages for a week, with the next four days – Monday-Thursday – overleaf.  But the other part of that page – on the right – contained the Friday/Sat/Sunday/Notes for a completely different month, with the next Monday-Thursday overleaf, then the next pages had to continue on from there, with dates getting closer together as you get to the middle of the section. 

The next section did this all over again, then the next.  The final section also has note pages and address pages, so they also had to be set up correctly.  It was a bit of a challenge (alright a head-ache) at times, but I did get it right in the end. 

At least I have the structure set up now, so I can re-do the files for next year’s dates.  Then I just have to remember how to print them correctly!

After all that, plain journals / note-books will seem so easy!  I will try to get started on those quite soon and add them to my stock.  I have all the materials, so it’s just a case of spending some time on them.  I’ll post some photos when I have managed to make a couple of these – maybe you’d all like to see them and let me know what you think.

Any suggestions for design / cover choices would be welcomed.  I have the fabrics I showed above, also a few others with patterns and designs (a couple with London designs, one in B&W and the other in blue with red London Buses!), so I shall have fun thinking what to make next.  I’ve also got an incredible supply of papers, so I don’t think I’ll be short on ideas!

Yay!