Hand Bookbinding 101: Jotter Journals. How to make a unique exercise book - fast and easy

Making your own books is really fun, it is a great way to individualize your stationery, and it can be quick and cheaper than buying products that in the end might even be of much lower quality.

In this introductory class to Western bookbinding we will start with making a small booklet. When you look at the shelf of a book store and see all the commercially bound books, you probably wouldn't guess how many different ways of binding a book there are. And even when binding just a small volume like we are going to do here, there are still many different ways of how to do it. In this course I am going to cover one of the most important and most basic ways to do it, a method called "3-hole binding". This technique is important both on its own, and as a stepping stone towards binding more substantial volumes.

As books go, the book(s) that you will create following this course can have many uses: It could be an excercise book, but of course you could use it as a journal to carry around, to fill with drawings, poetry, shopping lists, random thoughts, your shopping receipts, and whatnot. It could be used to doodle in it while in a boring meeting or on the phone. Or it could be a guest book at a party, or accompany you on your next crafts market to let people subscribe to your newsletter, it could be a sticker album, or to take notes in your next skillshare class...

• Welcome
• Slightly Dry Start: Tools and Materials
• Exciting Start: Making the First Jotter
• Soft Covers
• Hard Covers
• Goodbye (and final tip)