Journal-ish book

Okay, My character in Teonn is going on an expedition, and obviously wants to write down notes.
Therefore, for the next game, I will need a sort of simple, preferably as cheap as possible, book of sorts.
The only requirements are that it must be blank, fitting for a medieval setting, not expensive looking, and not be expensive.
I believe that I might be able to make something myself, but then I would need to know where to get the materials =S.
(Leather cover would be awesome)

Thank you =D.

Leather scraps you can find on trademe

Then for a book you can pick up something from an art store or whitcouls for about 10 bucks, or cheaper alternatives at stationary stores.

Buy some glue and cover.

Simple :slight_smile:

Wait until the sales hit after christmas as you can pick that stuff up (non leather) cheaply

You can also get very cheap leather scraps at Geoff’s Emporium or Ike’s Emporium. Just ask the staff.

The thing I love about larp is that it doesn’t have to be authentic - looking authentics is good enough. So you might want to check out material shops for suede / leather-look material, probably in the upholstery section. It may not be cheaper than real leather, but you’d be getting more of it. I would think material easier to cut/work with than leather, though I suppose it comes down to the thickness.
Wrap the outside with the “leather” and take it about an inch over the inside of the cover, then a coloured material like a deep blue or maroon, can be glued over the inside of the cover, going up to the edge, which hides the leather edge.

Standard PVA glue works well on absorbent stuff like leather/cardboard/material.

For the pages, the nicest paper I have found is watercolour paper - you can buy pads of it. Something with decent thickness and texture to make it seem parchmenty, but if you’re going to use real quill and ink like Depth was using, might make the writing tricky.

You could also look at other options, like:

  • a long scroll that rolls up to be stuffed into a tube
  • Vellum
  • a box or pouch of lose papers

[quote=“Derek”]You could also look at other options, like:

  • a long scroll that rolls up to be stuffed into a tube
  • Vellum
  • a box or pouch of lose papers[/quote]

Wax tablets.

[quote=“Hannah”]The thing I love about larp is that it doesn’t have to be authentic - looking authentics is good enough. So you might want to check out material shops for suede / leather-look material, probably in the upholstery section. It may not be cheaper than real leather, but you’d be getting more of it. I would think material easier to cut/work with than leather, though I suppose it comes down to the thickness.
Wrap the outside with the “leather” and take it about an inch over the inside of the cover, then a coloured material like a deep blue or maroon, can be glued over the inside of the cover, going up to the edge, which hides the leather edge.

Standard PVA glue works well on absorbent stuff like leather/cardboard/material.

For the pages, the nicest paper I have found is watercolour paper - you can buy pads of it. Something with decent thickness and texture to make it seem parchmenty, but if you’re going to use real quill and ink like Depth was using, might make the writing tricky.[/quote]

Thanks for this suggestion, however I do think I would prefer the cover to be true leather, as it just feels more… right XD.

As for Derek’s suggestions, the box of loose papers is going to be a bit too chaotic in my opinion, and the scrolls might take up quite a bit of space, a bit more than they need atleast… The vellum might be an option if the book doesn’t work out… I could however just make a loose leather cover, and have loose papers in there, it would be more ordered than a box or pouch of loose papers, but still have a bit of chaoticness =3… I’ll see what I can do =D.

Go to a craft fair. Like one of the big summer festivals, or a school fair, or whatever. There’s a stall that goes around in Wellington (and I bet there’s the equivalent in Auckland) that does these tooled kangaroo leather notebooks with hand stitched pages.

Pics, if possible? Sounds awesome :slight_smile:

I picked up the one I was using as Depth from Camden Markets. Not much use being over here in NZ, but if you know anyone in London, or who is heading that way…

I can’t remember the price, but loved the books. The little latch on the front, the leather cover, the paper inside… just lovely. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.

Jon

Okay, I believe I now have all the materials (I took my time >.> <.< >.>).
I have gotten soft leather as a cover, and linen paper as… well, paper (I thought it looked nice, and I couldnt find the Water Coloured paper)
The only problem now is… how do I bind it?
My plan was to just make slits throughout the cover and the paper, and put a few leather bands through it, my mom said all the pages would go floppy then though =/
Any hints? I would prefer not to use glue, and the more authentic it will look (without too much skill required) the better =D. Or is my plan good as well?

How big is the leather & paper?

You could use a piece of brown string or a leather strip down the middle. Then you could add/remove pages as you need too.
EG: Put leather on table, place paper on top, turn it landscape, put a piece of string down the middle, top to bottom, bend the paper in 1/2 like a book.
Tie the string ends together. You might need to adjust the tension on the string, but that could work?
I guess it depends on how you want it to look.

My brain turned 90 degrees in the middle of that - any chance of some totally professional MS Paint pics?

Tazzy’s solution relies on folding your paper in half to make pages. So if you have A4 paper, you could fold it in half to make an A5 booklet. Note that this means each page of the “journal” will be half the size of whatever paper you’ve bought.

My suggestion is a variation on that theme. If you’ve got A4 paper, fold each page in half (to make a crease), unfold it, and then make a pile however thick you want your book to be. Using a needle and thread, stitch down the fold to join all the pages together. This stiching is a real historical bookbinding technique. It feels weird sewing paper, but it’s a common approach. Then glue the outmost pages to the inside of your leather cover. Alternatively, if your leather is thin enough and your needle is thick enough, you can stitch straight through the paper and the leather cover, joining them together with stiching that will show on the spine of your book. There are variations on this theme that can be used to hide the stiching on the outside (e.g. you could stitch your paper to a thin leather inner cover, then glue that to a thick lather outer cover).

Folding paper limits the number of pages you can have in a journal because you can only fold so many pieces of paper together at once before the pages are fubar. But you could make multiple journals if you want more page count. Or you could make multiple “folios” of folded paper, and attach them all inside a cover with a wide spine to make one big thick book:

[quote=“Kamica”]Okay, I believe I now have all the materials (I took my time >.> <.< >.>).
I have gotten soft leather as a cover, and linen paper as… well, paper (I thought it looked nice, and I couldnt find the Water Coloured paper)
The only problem now is… how do I bind it?[/quote]

mothteeth.com/bookmaking/
aboutbookbinding.com/binding … ook-2.html

Basically: make signatures, stitch them together with kettle stitch. If you don’t want to glue the block into the cover with endpapers, then you could glue only the spine, or stitch it. (For some journals you can also stitch the signatures straight through the cover, though that could be fiddly if you have a lot of them).

Nice, a complete guide of How To Do It Properly.

That’s quite involved though (the specialised stitching in particular looks like it would take some time to grok), if someone wants to just throw something together then a fast and dirty “fold, stitch, attach” approach is adequate I reckon.

Another pointer for Kamica - if you want the paper to look more old-fashioned, tear all the edges off using a ruler. Old paper was seldom cut cleanly, it was torn, and the rough edge gives it more credibility. It will also make it a non-standard size, so it isn’t recognisable as modern A4 or whatever. Similarly, you can get an old-paper look by taking plain cheap white paper and dying it in tea and then drying it, before binding it (people call this “tea staining”). Some people burn the edges of paper, but personally I’m not a huge fan of that unless I’m going for a really roughed-up look.

I think I will just use a sharp knife or something to cut the papers, also, I bought A3 paper =3, But I will be getting about… 40 to 50 A5 pages in it. I reckoned this would make it portable enough, and big enough to use properly. Anyway, it seems I am not going to get away from stitching then? Meh, Well I did see a way of stitching, and then binding the book without using glue.

Basically incorporating leather strips in the back as soon as you start stitching, so that they are stitched to the paper (Without actually getting holes in them) Then make slits in the cover at the appropriate places, run the leather through there… and then somehow attach them together… okay how do I attach leather together? XD(I have never worked with leather before) Should I stitch this as well? It is quite thin leather, so that shouldnt be a problem, or would a simple knot work somehow?

Stitching :slight_smile: But I ADOS it first just to keep it in place.

You’ll need an awl and linen thread for the binding anyway, which is what you also need to stitch leather.

Okay, being dutch here, I figured out what an Awl is (Not a mis-spelled own obviously) But when I google ADOS, I just get stuff about autism >.>
Sooo, translation please? =3.

[quote=“Kamica”]Okay, being dutch here, I figured out what an Awl is (Not a mis-spelled own obviously) But when I google ADOS, I just get stuff about autism >.>
Sooo, translation please? =3.[/quote]

Scary glue, used by larpers for weapon manufacture, but works on leather (which I learned when I started spiral-wrapping grips).

Just don’t leave it in your car on a hot day.