Making a Journal Using Thread Binding

Creating a journal from scratch:

This is a journal I made for my buddies birthday. It’s more of an art journal because the paper I used is homemade, very thick and fibrous, and small. It’s sort of a clean slate for him to express his creativity how he chooses.
The basic principles of creating a journal this way stay the same, whether you’re using recycled paper for the pages or cereal boxes for the cover.

Supplies:

materials for building a journal

A Cover – In this case, leftover fabric from my mom’s quilting hobby
Pages – Home made paper using ground up newspapers, water and a blender
Twine – To create a binding
Scissors – For cutting…
Hole Punch – To create holes in the binding

Punch Holes:

punch a hole through the binding

Using your hole punch, pole 3 or 4 holes near the edge of your pages and cover. If you have a lot of paper, it’s easiest to use a sturdy 3 hole punch. In this case I only have a few pages so I did each hole at a time using a pocket knife.

Cut the twine and feed through the pages:

cut the yarn

feed the yarn through the holes

Once all of the twine is fed through the holes, tie knots leaving plenty of space the journal will be able to turn pages easily

tie the yarn into a knot

This is how your binding should look:

example of the binding1

example of the binding2

The finished journal:

The finished homemade journal1

The finished journal2

This type of journal is durable too. I threw it around the room to see if the binding would hold together. It’s flawless. My personal journal has traveled across the US in my backpack and is still intact.