At the end of last year I kept the spare paper from my daughter’s exercise books and have been making little notebooks from the scrap paper just by collating the pages folding them together and using the back of the cover as a cover. Cutting to size then stapling it.
It’s a great way to use the paper and have been experimenting with interlacing it with sketching paper so that I can write and sketch as well as use it as a general todo, bullet journal and sketch book. It’s not great and doesn’t substitute my other little book but ok for doodles and practising. Ive been using my fountain pens on this and you can see a lot on the other side.
In my latest Temu order (and hopefully last for a while…) I bought a book binding kit and watched a few YouTube videos on how to do book binding. I was inspired and did one late one night. Turns out I had some archival pva tiger glue in my glue kit from my last experiment to decoupage a placemat with Japanese paper. It didn’t work out. The glue was too sticky but have used it to hold my water. Or the time I made a puzzle keeper that we never used… Kids were way to young to appreciate puzzles.
So I made my first book! I covered it with some beautiful Japanese paper I bought on our last trip to Japan many moons ago before kids.
I did some sketches at my daughter’s Netball game on the weekend and only had a chance to paint it.
Love the granulation of the watercolour paper it’s quite rough in texture. This paper are loose sheets of 300gsm watercolor paper and marker paper (previously reviewed on Review marker paper and experiments with cheap graphic marker’s) from Temu.
The marker paper is a lot like hot pressed paper and works well with calligraphy pens. The paint seems to perform well with watercolour paint.
Both took a little longer to dry so might not be helpful when doing quick sketches out and about. The marker paper can also be used as normal calligraphy writing paper.
Making my own took a few hours (I did get a bit carried away also covering my old pocket bible). So it prompted me to look into other alternatives. We’ve been talking about a trip to Japan some time in the future and as Japan is renowned for quality stationary I started looking into different notebooks you can get there. Found that everyone recommended using Tomoe river paper as being the best for calligraphy pens and for sheening inks. Tomoe river paper usually sell through third party and there are a few different notebook brands that use Tomoe river including
– Midori MD (different size and formats of exercise notebooks, dot grid, planners and diaries),
– Travellers Factory (travellers notebook and passport size)
– Hoboichi (planner, diaries)
– GoodInkPressions – from etsy
I mostly watched YouTube reviews which also show swatching inks on the paper. There is one video where they test out a number of different notebooks and alternatives. It was quite long but comprehensive.
When travelling I wouldn’t want to go overboard with bringing back so many souvenirs as well as art supplies that I could have bought in Australia. So I also looked at the price to buy from a Japanese art supply store like Itoya or sekaido and whilst it was only 220 yen for. Travellers notebook, the shipping is based on weight and size with $5 for postage and handling fee, then additional $18 for shipping.
Looking at Australian sites there was only one that had a slight sale and also stocked sheets of tomoe river paper! So I can try my hand at customising my own notebook with Tomoe river.
I also bought a few different travellers notebooks in passport – sketch, watercolour, blank, dot grid etc. I didn’t buy any of the calendar ones as I want to keep things flexible. It will be good to try them before heading to Japan so that I can work out which ones I do use regularly and stock up on the next sale or if/when we happen to go to Japan.
See next post for the comparison results! Travellers notebooks and calligraphy paper comparison
Rachel Fong Art 