So I went through one of my creative phases a few weeks ago and made some hand-stitched journals. They got progressively better, neater and usable. I gave them away though because the paper I’d used wasn’t particularly fountain pen friendly, so they weren’t too useful for myself.
Here’s the first attempt, complete with end-papers and bound in part of an old pair of jeans…
Spine reinforcement provided by some fabric biasing 
Alternate signatures from some old graph paper and printer paper 
End papers from some of my daughter’s scrap-booking paper 
Bound in part of some old Levi jeans
You can see that for the first try I just used some old graph pad and some printer paper in alternating signatures – just to get the hang of things. Unfortunately Canada – despite being nominally metric – subscribes to the US paper standards, so we typically get “Letter” sized paper at 8.5″x11″ instead of A4. There’s not a huge difference for most usage, but the A-series paper sizes are so much more well thought out, in that if you cut A4 in half you get A5… with exactly the same aspect ratio. Fold that in half and you get an A6 notebook… again: with the same aspect ratio. Quarter of Letter size is OK… but it’s just not as aesthetically pleasing in my view.
Along the way, I discovered that HP 28lb (105 g/m2) printer paper – readily available from Walmart and other places – is actually reasonably good for fountain pen ink. I gather there’s a 32lb version too, though I’ve yet to find any in my local shops. Even the cartridges of ink that came with my Pilot Parallel barely bleed through, and that’s saying something!
The next challenge came in pre-printing the pages of the journals to make them more use-specific. (Week per spread diary, hiking journal, wine tasting log, that sort of thing…) And at that point I got bored and shelved the project…
At Christmas, my lovely family bought me some really nice writing paper (Tomoe River for those in the know), which though a wonderful gift now constantly gives me a dilemma when I write letters. Will this particular recipient appreciate the way the Tomoe River brings out the shading in the ink? Or will they be struggling enough just to read my scrawl, and not even notice it was a fountain pen rather than a Biro?
Tomoe River is sold as A4, and this particular paper is 52g/m2, so pretty thin. It helpfully comes with a cardboard template sheet with a grid on one side and lines on the other. The paper is thin enough to see the guide lines through it, and some of us, believe me, need all the help we can get to write in a straight line!
It occured to me then that if I pre-printed very faint lines (or feint-ruled as it is in the UK) on the 28lb paper, I could use it more easily without it being as obtrusive to the recipient. I then went on to make grid and dot patterns because, well, I could! I enclose them for your delight and delectation – or ridicule, if you’re of a more negative persuasion.
Remember – be Internet safe! I didn’t put anything dodgy in these Word files, but to be frank – you don’t know me from Adam, so make sure to use a virus checker before opening the files.
If you’d like to explore other options for yourself, or prefer not to download files from unknown sources, the essential elements I used were as follows. You can obviously tweak them to your own needs:
- Open MS-Word and set page margins to zero on all sides.
- Insert a table and add a few rows – it’s not important how many. If you are creating a grid or dots, add a few columns too.
- Set the row size option to “exactly” rather than “at least” and set the row/column dimensions you want for your lines/grid/dot-spacing.
- I found 7mm worked well for me, but if you’re a small writer go smaller by all means.
- Add additional rows and columns to fit as many as you need to fill the page.
- Go to table properties and set its position to be centred relative to the page in both horizontal and vertical dimensions. This will centre the table on the page at print time.
- Now things get style-specific.
- For lines, go to “Borders” in “Table Design” and de-select the vertical lines on the outsides of the table. They’ll become dotted on the screen, but will no longer print.
- For grid, you need all the lines, so do nothing.
- For dots, go to “Borders” in “Table Design” and de-select all the lines – you don’t want any lines to print – you’re just using them to give accurate spacing. Now add a “.” character in the first square (or “+” or one of the Wingding characters if you prefer) and duplicate it across each cell in the row and then duplicate the row down to fill all the rows. You have a small amount of control of the dot location within the table cell by selecting left/centre/right/top/centre/bottom justification and cell margin, but make sure you do it on all cells to maintain the relative “pitch” set by the cells spacing. It’s not really necessary though.
- I chose to make my lines/dots quite faint so they weren’t obtrusive once I wrote on the paper. Do this by selecting “Pen Colour” in the borders setting or text colour for the dots. I used the pale blue “Blue, Accent 1, Lighter 80%” and also “Orange, Accent 2, Lighter 80%”, but knock yourself out – make it as faint or bold as you like! I also made the lines dotted rather than solid, to make them even fainter. You can make them solid black and extra wide though, if that’s your preference!
- Duplicate to a second page if you want to make use of your printer’s double-sided print facility.
- Print! If asked, ignore the error about margins being out of range – the printer will print as much as it can and leave the minimum white space around the edge it’s capable of. If you prefer – print to PDF and print it on someone else’s printer if it’s better than yours!
The same principle will work on any paper size you may want to use. Just add more rows/columns to fill the page.
If you’re making refill pages for a loose-leaf journal, like a Filofax, start by creating a TextBox of the correct page size and putting the table in that. You can then guillotine or cut to the text box perimeter once it’s printed.
Use two columns with two tables in panorama mode if you’re going to pre-print pages for a hand-made journal. That’s my next project. Once I get around to it…
I hope you found this of some use. Let me know how you got on!
Quieter Elephant 