Sometimes your big plans just won't work, but in the end you still end up with something pretty great. I'm extremely picky about my bookbinding materials, and what I had in mind to be used as the cover material of my new bullet journals just didn't pass the durability requirements at all. That turn was unexpected and most unwelcome. Luckily the change of plans gave nice results anyway, and now you can find these five long stitch bindings in my shop!

The watercolour paper covers have something like a semi-attached dust jacket of ingres paper. The cover paper is attached to the stiffer under-layer only at the spine and at the front edge turn ins, so the covers remain nice and flexible.

I used soft off-white linen for the drawstring bags and attached the drawstring tape with a few stitches, so you won't accidentally pull it out. I hate it when I lose the end of a drawstring, and I feel it's never as easy to replace as it was to put in the first time. It's just a tiny detail added to the whole, but often it's the details that make the whole work!

The starting point for these books was that I wanted to use recycled kraft paper for the pages. It's just really pretty and as the paper itself is flecked, the gridded dot doesn't stand out too aggressively (and there are already plenty of dotted grid notebooks with white pages in the world). The dotted grid is visible when you're looking for the dots, but it doesn't dominate the page. But just because some people prefer a more visible grid, I made one book with much darker dots. You can see the comparison between the two below.

I'm now stocking up on the small white long stitch notebooks and taking a much deserved tiny little break from making new books as I go visit my parents. I will continue to hunt for other cover material options as I'm still chasing my original idea that featured a bit of a collage as well, but it'll have to wait a while. V is currently acting as a test user for one solution I'm a bit dubious about - we'll see if it works out. Sometimes it would be so much easier to be less of a perfectionist!