Handmade Notebooks

In making notebooks like these you can recycle 50 or so sheets of coupon bond. Fold each sheet vertically in the middle to hide the writings on one side. Collate & straighten the leaves, making sure that there are no loose pages. Put a generous amount of Elmer’s Glue on the side where the two edges of the pages meet. Then bind all the leaves with a thin piece of cardboard–any appropriately sized cheap box will do. Afterwards, cover the cardboard with your own artwork.

To cover the notebook below, I used a plain, gold-colored piece of paper that once wrapped a box containing a white pashmina which I got as a Christmas gift. I call this notebook, “The Golden Notebook.”

“Chair w/ shadow”

For the design, I tried to make a contour drawing on the smooth paper. But I couldn’t think of anything to draw. I haven’t drawn in years. So I settled with drawing this chair with black Magic Ink, after producing the watery effect that resulted from the resistance of Stabilo Pen 68 ink to the paper.

One of the chairs we found along Evangelista Street

To cover the notebook below, I used as the base a crumpled piece of orange paper that once wrapped Brenda Shaughnessy’s Interior with Sudden Joy, which I got for my birthday. I pasted the piece of banig-like material that was tied around my bestfriend’s wedding souvenir–a bottle of blueberry jam–on the spine. I also bordered the notebook with the violet ribbon that came with the orange wrapper. Then I found a nice image by Luis Cornejo in an old issue of ArtNews magazine & pasted this on another cutout to complete the composition.

I meant for this to be a gift, but in this age of laptops I couldn’t think of anyone who would really appreciate receiving a recycled notebook. I was also starting to take home cooking seriously during the time that I was making it. & Cornejo’s image shows a girl who seems to be having fun in what seems to be a kitchen. So I decided to turn the notebook into a recipe book. Here are some recipes inside: