Re-purposed ‘ideas’ notebook (& more)

One of the things I un-buried in my freak tidying spree was a couple of comment cards from a nice cafe in town, where Corey and I sat and recovered from the hugest cooked breakfast EVER, on a lazy Saturday a few weeks ago.   I picked up the comment cards with no idea of what I wanted to do with them (comment-making being the last thing on my mind); they were just so irrefutably useable.  Look at all those cute little boxes to tick, and questions to answer…  I knew they would be perfect for…well, something.

So I re-discovered the comment cards, and it all became clear.  These were, in fact, notebook covers –  how could I not have seen it earlier?  Look:

Inside, I decided to put into effect a concept that’s been bubbling around in my head for ages.  Inside are, of course, recycled paper pages.  BUT these are not just any pages, oh no: these are the pages for an ‘ideas’ notebook.  You see, I have ideas, quite literally, ALL THE TIME.  And yes, almost any notebook will do; but my ideas tend to be a combination of picture/diagram alongside scribbled notes.  So I came up with a whole series of page layouts that allowed various combinations of picture + annotations.  If your brain doesn’t work in the same way as mine (God help you, if it does!), you could use the blank spaces for thread samples, or fabric swatches, or a photo of a project, or – you get the idea.

Anyway, alongside the funky re-purposed cover – that you can, of course, fill in at your discretion in a bored moment – are these cool little ideas pages:

The pages are fixed into the cover with a hand-stitched binding.  The only neutral-coloured thread I could find in my newly-tidy study (other than a string too thick for this notebook) was an undyed medium silk, so this is a very decadent as well as very simple binding.  I was saving the silk to dye, but what the hell!

Are you intrigued?  Buy one of these prototype ideas notebooks in my Etsy store!

This notebook includes 2 different styles of ideas pages, but Telaic Fantasy 2 is a dual-purpose notebook & zine, and comes with 6 different layouts of ideas pages for you to sample!  More finished notebooks will be added to the Etsy Store soon, in a range of sizes from mini (A7-ish), to medium (A6-ish), to large (A5-ish).  I’m planning a knitter’s notebook and a stitcher’s notebook with additional custom-printed pages (including craft-specific graph paper), and – while I’m letting cats out of bags – a notebook with a weave-able cover!  I’ll let you know when they’re ready, so check back… 🙂

Tidying (shudder) but finding various stuff & ideas

I am not a tidy person.  I like to have what I need spread out and accessible around me – and still there the next time I sit down to continue.  But I have been so busy lately, and putting together kits and zines in the tiniest corner of my really quite large study made me realise that the ‘essentials’  were spreading out of control.  So I got out some bin liners and set to work…

You see, the problem is that what to most people would be genuine rubbish (misprinted papers, discarded packaging) I can genuinely see uses for.  The cardboard packaging from a random stationery item can generally be turned into some form of loom.  The half-printed papers I can use when I’m experimenting with my own packaging formats, or notebook pages.  I was strict with myself, though, and made boxes for full and partial sheets of paper that I could realistically re-use, and sent the rest for recycling.  I threw away the chocolate wrappers (look, I need energy while I work, okay?).  I was ruthless with the random packaging leftovers.  Admittedly I kept most of the card, but the plastic-y bits, and shrink-wrap etc are gone.  Hurrah!

By anybody else’s standards this room would not look tidy (except perhaps by Corey’s standards – and he at least will never nag me about the state of my study, because his is infinitely worse).  It probably looks like everything has just been pushed out to the edges.  Okay, to an extent, this is what I did…  But I have also slightly organised all the stuff I was ‘saving’ so that it is  actually useable and accessible (findable!), I have thrown away the stuff that really was rubbish (oh my god, 2 bin liners-full!) and I HAVE FLOOR SPACE!   Oh, oh, I also have table space!  It’s really quite exciting (for me, anyway).  So nice to look across from my chair and see carpet, and think I won’t have to nudge everything out of the way to make space when I’m putting the next zine together (watch this space – if I don’t post about TF2 later today, it will definitely be in the next day or so!).

And I brought up a pot of hyacinths from downstairs, so every now and then I get a lovely waft of their rich scent.  Mmm…

I fully accept that I should not have allowed my ‘creative disorder’ (okay, mess) to get quite so out of hand; there’s just always so much more important stuff to do than tidying…  It has always been and will always be my nature, and I’ve accepted that.  It is also possible that it took me slightly longer than perhaps necessary to tidy up this time, as I kept re-discovering things I had accidentally buried.  Yes, it was necessary to spend 10 minutes staring at & contemplating a small packet of needles.  It was!  When I bought it, it was just an ordinary packet of needles, and I honestly thought nothing more about it – but look!  I made this:

Yes, I know the picture labelled ‘front’ is actually a different packet of needles to the finished notebook, but I’d finished making it before I realised I should probably have taken a ‘before’ picture.  You get the idea, anyway.  I just cut some pretty (recently unearthed) handmade paper embedded with petals to size, and attached to the centre panel of the opened-out needle packet (see below).  I used a dab of glue to fix the bottom piece of paper to the packet, and stitched the little stack of papers into place.  (I could just have easily have used a staple, but I’m kind of into stitched bindings, at the moment.)  Just a slightly different spin on the matchbook notepad concept, really – and slightly more appropriate to needleworkers.

(I should really remember to add in a darker-coloured backing when I scan in white/pale blue things; sorry…)

Mini Magazine Notebook (with pockets!)

I was thinking about how to present the next issue of ‘Telaic Fantasy‘ (just because I have a model that works doesn’t mean I can leave it at that – that’s just not the way I am!).  I wanted a cover with integral pockets, so I played about folding a piece of paper in various ways, and found something that worked.  It’s slightly smaller than I would have preferred, so whether it will actually be the model for the next TF remains to be seen (although I can always add extra pages, to compensate).

Front, back & inner of a readable notebook!

But I had some magazines lying around in my room, and I used them to experiment with the format rather than using up my printer paper.  I thought the combination of pretty pictures and random text worked really well – I love the idea of having a notebook with something to read on the cover, when you get bored!

Rather than have a roomful of empty prospective zine covers, I stapled some blank paper in the middle of the prototypes to make mini notebooks.  Okay, so I thus used up some of my printer paper, anyway, but now it’s in handy notebook form, so justifiable!  Notebooks are like bags (no, really!) – you can just never have too many.

Click here for the how-to & template to make your own notebook out of the page of a magazine (or whatever).

Front cover, inner & back cover of 2 more notebook prototypes

Jelly Packet Matchbook Notebook

I don’t know why. I was lying in bed, trying to sleep, when my mind flickered to the uneaten packet of jelly sitting in the kitchen cupboard.  I wasn’t hungry, but it wasn’t leaving my mind – suddenly, I could visualise the potential of this innocent little packet of jelly.

So I got up, found the jelly, removed the actual jelly,  and took the box upstairs.  A bit of glue, 2 small snips, 1 piece of paper and 2 staples later, and I had a funky re-purposed matchbook-style notebook.  I scanned the process (only 4 steps) as I went along, and have written up instructions to make your own as a PDF freebie.

The only thing I would change if making another (& why wouldn’t I?  My husband loves jelly, so I know he won’t complain!) is to position the paper slightly higher before stapling.  I think this is such a cool notebook!

Jelly Packet Matchbook Notebook

N.B.  I also noticed that this kind of jelly packet is exactly the right size to store ATC cards.  You can’t tell me there’s not potential there…!