Vintage Burgundy Leather Journal

This was once a leather briefcase!

Interior pages -
Heavy white drawing paper
The first and last page - heavy grey Canson paper

146 pages
292 counting both sides

4 1/2" width
6 1/8" height
1 3/4" depth

The binding is non-adhesive (no glue is used) - the leather cords bind the book together.

This is an original design - using the leather cords as the decorative exterior feature (and functional interior feature!) of the journal.

Here is a picture of the interior of the journal -

the pages are all sewn onto the leather cords - and then the cords are woven through to the exterior of the journal - the leather straps tie on the front cover to keep the journal closed.

And here is "Mr. Potato Head" (as my mother calls this tool) -

it is my small awl.

I love it.

I am piercing every hole in each signature (groups of paper) to create the holes so that I can sew the binding. You can see my template that I am using in the folds of the signatures.

Here is a pic of the process of preparing each signature!

There is really a lot of prep work before I can even begin sewing the journals together!

I just finished this book this morning - I will take pics tomorrow and post them soon.

The cover is from a rescued antique french book - I used a pale blue paper on the spine (to give more color to the exterior design) and I created the sewing around rose colored leather straps on the exterior of the binding.

I am piercing the holes into an old travel book - you can also use a wooden cradle - but, since I don't have mine here - this is the next best thing!

Here is a pic of the cover - I carefully removed the cover (the book was already falling apart) and sanded the remaining paper on the interior of the cover - then I carefully glued a new sheet of the pale blue Canson paper to the interior.

This pic shows the small spacers on each signature that I used of the pale blue paper - which will show on the spine.

Oh - here's a pic of the beginning of the process of a book I posted yesterday - the small leather with the aqua binding. This pic shows how the leather looked once I cleaned and prepped it!