April Wrap Up

I haven’t been around WordPress or blogging very much. I applogize for that and beg your patience. I haven’t totally been slack this month. I have been learning several new skills; bookbinding, diy planners, leatherworking, and wood burning. On top of working the kinks out of using fountain pens.

I have also been thinking about a project that combines bookmaking and writing, currently titled Project Notebook. I’ll write more about that in a future post. So this month, I have been growing quietly and waiting for the moment when those efforts burst into bloom.

Cheers on this hot sultry stormy night, james

#Newskilks #diy #books

Fountain Pen: Take 2

I wrote a few weeks ago about aquiring a couple of Hero fountain pens and a bottle of Parker Quink black ink. So now I want to update on my new ink samples, (Thank you Goulet Pens) and my new Sheaffer Veiwpoint fountain pen.

After much discussion and browsing Gouletpens.com for ink. I found out they sell 2 mL ink samples. And as far as I can tell every ink they sell, you can get a sample. So I picked out four gorgeous inks and awaited delivery. I ordered the samples Thursday night, I received them Monday afternoon. The colors are bright and vibrant. I used a dip pen from a calligraphy set I never could master and tested them.

I, then cleaned my pen I had ink in. That was fun trying to put the ink back in the bottle only to later learn. Yeah you can but why would you want to. And after much flushing got my pen clean. I let it dry for twenty minutes maybe before I tried putting a new ink in it. De Atramentis Edgar Allen Poe green, I noticed the ink flowed smoothly but it scratched on the paper. I haven’t gotten it straight yet, but I have hope.

The Sheaffer Viewpoint is a medium nib and the blue ink is very blue and bright. It writes much larger and somewhat wetter, the nib size I believe. So I have two working inked fountain pens and cool ink to play with. I still urge you give them a try if you have ever wanted to try or thought fountain pens are cool.

Cheers, james

#Fountainpens #ink

DIY Planner Update

Well still putting my cover together so I’ll put that in another post. My orginal page format isn’t working with the smaller pages. So I am going to try a two page format. Date and events on first page, notes and next day to-dos on the next. I will post a pic once I get started.

The page format seemed to work better with a larger page size, 9×6. Otherwise my writing was all squished together and unreadable on the more portable smaller size. I have been doing some digging into making planner templates, but they don’t seem to fit my needs. So I will try this until I need to do differently.

Cheers and my aplogies for being so out of sync with my normal posting schedule. james

D I Y Planner/Journal thing

Haha made you look.

No seriously I have recently come back to the need for tracking my day and things I need to rember to get done. In a former life, I kept a calendar and kept track of everything I did, phone calls, appointments, things I worked on, important deadlines, etc. Then when I moved into a new line of work it didn’t matter so much to keep up with my time.

Well last week, I really needed to rember what I did on a specific date and I had almost no clues to follow. Thankfully the day’s events were pinned down well enough to satisfy. But I was freaked out enough to want to go back to keeping a work calendar. So I started looking online at various diy planners and how to make leather journals, so I married the best of both together. I will be making a two section blank page notebook. I plan to use a modified daily calendar style by writing the date and the times. I tried doing it for a couple days on scrap paper and it seemed to do pretty well. I included a notes section along with two smaller sections for to dos. Although the paper I’ll be using will be smaller. It may mean breaking it between two or three pages as needed. I will use it for a week or two and let you know how its working out.

To get started I was going to use a cardboard backing for sturdiness, yes I was going to cover it with fabric, until I could procure leather. Life is better with leather. Then my hubby, (love him) decided he had a leather belt pocket that would gain new life as a cover. His ideas for the cover and my thoughts on the cover are kinda sort similar. But he’s into more technical constructions than I am. So he will figure it out and amaze me one more time. It would be so cool to be mechanically inclined.

Here are my two notebook pages, twelve sheets each for a total of 48 pages. The dimensions are 6 inches tall × 4 1/4 inches wide. This is a pretty handy size. I can tote with me or I can leave it on my desk at work. I used sketch pad paper and stitched the sheets using the inner core from paracord (long story on why I have this, but very handy stuff). For the stitching I started on the inside and made sure to catch the loop of the previous stitch on the outside. This way the pages will lay flat.

I also wanted to see if naked or covered was better. The cover is a page of scrapebooking paper. It isn’t as thick as I thought it was. However this is my first attempt at making something like this. Mistakes are valuable because you learn what doesn’t work. (Feel free to qote me lol.) So all that is left is the leather covering for the whole notebook. And then using it and letting you guys know how my design worked.

I will save that for a second post. Cheers, james

P.S. I hope this gives anyone in need of a planner, journal, diary, or book of paper the inspiration and motivation to try your hand at diy.