Hand-Made Batik-Covered A5 Notebook

Hand-Crafted Unique Journal/Sketchbook/Notebook

The minute I saw the beautiful blue pattern of this paper from Hiromi in L.A. I knew I wanted to make something with it. It's "handmade in Nepal using bark of the Daphne plant (locally called "Lokta")...colored with batik wax-resist dyeing technique." The texture is soft and veined like a velvety leaf, and the layers of blue over the white just draw in your eye.

I used traditional bookbinding methods to strengthen it into bookcloth, then hand-stitched ten four-page signatures into a book block for it to cover. It's accented with bright orange headbands that just make me smile -- and I hope it will make you smile too.

It's 5.75" x 8.75" hardcover and spine filled with 40 pages of 80GSM printer paper, so it might have some ghosting with fountain pens or markers. It's a great journal to slip into your backpack, a gift for a budding artist, or a guest book to keep on your table.

And it's one-of-a-kind -- I will make other notebooks like this, or other with this paper, but this one? Entirely unique.