Silk Notebooks

Yesterday I decided I would take some time to work on a project with the silk papers I made with Jodi. I decided to make some hand bound silk notebooks.

I had my first experience with hand binding books last fall when I made the vegetarian cookbook for Maureen, as part of her "Secret Pal" reveal package. The book I made for her was sort of scrap book style, with recipes printed on coloured papers, and mounted onto different decorative papers, and then it was all put together with a mulberry paper cover and bound using the Japanese Stab binding method.

After that experience I think it is safe to say that I will never be a scrap booker, but I did enjoy the process of binding the book, quite a bit. I made additional copies of the book for people that had shared recipes, and used pre-printed pages. I liked that a lot more!


When I saw the finished pieces of silk paper the first thing I thought of was these hand bound books, and I decided to have another go at it.

This time I took some 5x7 spiral notebooks, clipped away the spiral binding, and re-covered and bound them. I used the original cardboard covers as a base for my new silk covers.

This was great because not only were they already the same size as the paper, but they had

holes in the proper places for me to use as a guideline when sewing up my binding. I did have to punch the holes out several times through out the process of applying the silk, or they would have been lost. It was much more time consuming than I expected it to be, but when the books were finished this morning [I let the covers dry overnight before binding] I really felt like it was worth the time and effort.

I think the finished notebooks are absolutely beautiful, and will make wonderful gifts.



I had some other plans for the rest of the silk paper, but now I'm thinking they may all become notebooks. At the very least I will have to make more silk paper for future book binding projects.