I’ve been using bullet journal for a long time now, but because I tend to keep it basic I don’t frequently talk about it on this blog. While I’ve dabbled in aesthetic spreads and pretty artwork, I find it’s best when I focus on using it to keep track of my to-do lists and make notes throughout the day. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want a pretty, well set up journal to write in! So this year, I decided to make my own custom bullet journal that catered to my personal notebook preferences.
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Why I Made My Own Bullet Journal
I made myself a custom bullet journal for the exact reason I do most of my crafting: I’m picky.
There are a lot of great journals on the market. I’ve used both the dot and grid versions on the Leuchtturm1917 journal several times. I’ve gotten fancy, thick artist notebooks from popular brands like Archer and Olive. All of them helped me develop my journal preferences, but none of them carried exactly what I wanted.
So, I sat down and listed out my preferences:
- Thin pages, to make the book as light as possible.
- Paper that could handle the wet ink from the pilot G-2 pens I prefer, without bleeding or excessive smudging.
- Off-white paper. Not bright white, not cream.
- Pre-numbered pages, so I don’t need to take the time to do it by hand.
- No special, tear away, or otherwise specific pages.
- A grid, not a dot grid. Ideally with a color or weight difference in some of the lines. This would let me more easily divide up the page when I need to, without giving myself a headache counting each individual box.
- A clear space at the top for the date or page title.
- A hardcover and lay flat spine.
Once I knew what I was going for, I got to work.
Designing the Interior of the Journal
I used Adobe InDesign to create my journal pages. This program is designed for publishing, so it has features that are specific to book design. While my InDesign skills are a bit rusty, I regularly use other Adobe programs and have InDesgn included in my Creative Cloud subscription. So it was the logical choice for me.
For the pages design I was inspired by some engineer notebooks I saw while browsing around. I simplified things a bit with my final design, but I spent quite a bit of time googling things like “lab journal” and “scientific notebook.”
The color scheme had me a bit at a loss at first. But then I went on a little trip to the Field Museum with a friend. In that museum there’s a geology exhibit that looks like it hasn’t been fully updated since the 1960 or 70s. Like, if I saw it in the background of a Wes Anderson movie I wouldn’t have been surprised. The cases all had slight variations on a similar color scheme and I pulled from that to get the oranges and greens I used.
I won’t go into too much technical detail on how I actually made the pages, because I was mostly muddling through using a bunch of YouTube videos. But the first thing I did after setting up my document with A5 size pages was create a 5mm grid using the table function. I combined some cells at the top and bottom to create a heading space and a neat box for the page number. Then I played around with color and line weight until I was happy with my grid. This sounds simple, but since I’m still learning this program it took quite some time. Once I was happy with the pages, I designed myself a little box for my name and contact info on the first page.
Last, I figured out how many pages I wanted. I tend to use about 190-200 pages in every 6 month period. I was planning on having signatures of 4 leaves, which meant I would end up with 16 pages per signature. I decided to round up to 208 pages, which gave me exactly 13 signatures in my journal.
Sourcing Paper
Finding the right paper sounds like it would be easy, but it was one of the most frustrating parts of the process. There were four things that I was looking for when sourcing the paper for this journal, and I managed to find a paper that satisfied three of them.
First, it needed to be good for both writing and able to go through my printer. I have an old HP laser printer, so any paper needed to be compatible with it. I mean, I love to buy new and expensive craft tools, but getting a new printer just for this project was a little much, even for me.
A4 size. I wanted to make an A5 size journal, which is essentially an A4 piece of paper folded in half. So, if I printed on both sides of A4 paper, I would end up with four pages per sheet of paper without having to cut anything down. Also my printer couldn’t handle anything much larger than A4 anyway.
This was a bit difficult because I live in the US, where letter size paper is standard. It’s a little shorter and wider than A4 paper, so when folded in half it makes a page that’s a little longer and thinner. While some people may not be bothered by the difference, I knew it would drive me up the wall.
Second, I wanted thin paper. As thin as my printer could handle. Ghosting doesn’t bother me and I tend to cary my journal around with me, so lighter and thinner is better.
Third, I wanted to get off-white paper. I don’t like super bright white papers for writing, but I also don’t like my paper to be too yellow. I didn’t think this would be too hard to find, but I was willing to compromise here.
Last, I also wanted to find a short grain paper. Most commercially produced paper naturally folds better in one direction than the other, because the fibers are more aligned that way. Paper for home printing is generally long grain, so this is actually pretty difficult to find. I spent a little time reading through the bookbinding subreddit, and the general consensus seemed to be “it’s not ideal, but if you’re not using a lot of glue you’ll probably be fine. Don’t let perfection stop you from practicing.”
With all that said, I ended up buying this Kokuyo A4 KB Paper, 500 Sheets, 64gsm, 80 Bright (ISO). It was a the right size, not too thick, and slightly off white. It was able to be printed in a laser printer but also able to handle wet inks like those from fountain pens. The only downside was that the paper is long grain. But since I couldn’t find a short grain option that I liked, I went with it.
Printing the Journal Pages
You might think that it would be easy to just print directly from InDesign or at least export out a PDF that could be printed. Unfortunately, that is not the case. InDesign is made for professional printing, so there’s a lot of complicated stuff going on with their files that I don’t understand well enough to explain here. But after watching this YouTube video, I was able to get my pages from InDesign and into a PDF that could be printed by my home printer.
I started out by printing a few test pages just to get a sense of how the colors and line weight of my grid were interacting with the paper. I made a few tweaks until I had the lines as light as I could get within the capabilities of my printer. By which I mean, if I went too thin or too light the lines appeared visibly broken, which wasn’t what I wanted.
Next I had to figure out how to get the pages to be aligned correctly. I’m not going to go into great detail here for two reasons: first, I am still not 100% sure how I finally got things to work. By the end I was just smashing buttons and hoping things would work out. Second, the issues likely were specific to my printer/computer combo. So they wouldn’t be of help to anyone trying to replicate this project anyway.
Just know, that if you’re having minor alignment issues that are driving you crazy, you’re not alone.
In the end, the one issue I wasn’t able to solve had to do with my printer. I was printing on both sides of the paper, and on the second pass the printer would print a bit off center. it would do it a bit differently every time. Sometimes a bit crooked, sometimes straight but a good 1/8″ too far over one way or the other. I realized later that I may have been able to solve the issue by printing on one side, then reloading the paper and printing on the other, but I just didn’t have that in me at that point.
After much work, I finally had good enough to bind pages, in signatures of 4 leaves, with all the page numbers right. So after folding my pages into signatures, it was time to move on to the next step.
Sourcing Other Bookmaking Tools and Supplies
I had some mint green waxed linen thread leftover from a Crafter box I’d gotten a while back, so I decided to use that to sew everything together. I also used the bone folder, awl, triangle, ruler, X-Acto knife, and cutting mat I’d gotten with that kit (I’ve linked similar products here). I wanted to use a curved needle on this project, so I dug one out of my sewing box.
For the cover, I took a trip to my local Blick and picked up some binders board, a pretty paper, and some PVA glue. I already had a sheet of orange Canson Mi-Teintes paper I knew would be great for the inside cover. I thought about getting a brush for the glue, but I ended up just using an old one I had in my stash. I assumed it would be ruined in the end, but I was OK with that. Last, I grabbed a utility knife from my toolbox, since I didn’t think the X-Acto knife was the best tool to get me through the thick book board.
So, overall, sourcing supplies wasn’t that difficult. Even the things that I didn’t already have would have been easy to pick up at Blick or order from another online art supply store.
Assembling My Custom Bullet Journal
A lay-flat binding was one of the biggest things on my wish list, so I decided to try a coptic binding. I used a combo of the instructions of Bookbinding: A How To Guide by E. P. Carter (Amazon) and Handmade Books At Home by Chanel Ly (Amazon/Bookshop). While I’m sure there also are some good instructions online (bookbinding YouTube is excellent), I like to have step by step instructions with photos when I work on something like this.
I started by cutting out my cover boards. I made them about 1/16″ larger than my text block on all sides, because I didn’t want to end up with anything shifting too far outside the covers. I did end up being happy with this size when all was finished.
Next up was glueing my decorative papers to my cover. Cutting the papers to the correct size was easy with my exacto knife. The decorative paper was cut with 1″ tabs on all sides so they could be folded over, and the decorative paper was cut to about 3/16″ smaller than the cover on all sides.
I did mange to get the everything glued in place, but also I made quite a mess. All I can say is that I probably need to learn more about glueing techniques before I attempt that again.
Once the boards were dry, I got down to actually sewing the parts of the book together. This went mostly smoothly. I’m sure there are a few wonky bits in my binding, but honestly sewing books is way, way easier than sewing clothing. I did manage to tear my very last signature by pulling the thread too hard, so I repaired that with a few little scraps from the cover and a bit of glue.
Final Results And Future Plans
Is my new journal perfect? No. This was only the second book I’ve ever made and I know I made plenty of rookie mistakes. I can see some of them already (like the excess glue on the inside cover) and there are others that I’m sure I’ll be horrified by in a few years once my bookbinding skills improve.
However, overall, I’m delighted with my journal! The two color grid is fun to use and I loooove having my grid divided up into chunks of five. The big header at the top is perfect for writing the date in big, swooshy cursive letters. The large page numbers at the bottom of each page make it easy to find what I’m looking for. The spine book lays really flat and the hard cover supports the pages perfectly when I’m writing on the go.
I’m definitely going to make some changes next time, but I’m not entirely sure what yet. That’s fine, since this journal should last me the first half of the year. So I have time to try out a few more binding techniques, research supplies, and perhaps make a few sheets of my own marble paper to use in the next one. I might even find some fun new ideas if I’m able to make it to the first Chicago Stationary Fest in March.
Have you made your own journal? Do you have any advice or resources that could help me make my next one? Let me know in the comments or over on Instagram!