River's Journal

I started the new year needing af new notebook for scouting stuff and since the pockets of the scout uniform is slightly wonky in size, I decided to make one from scratch. I have been meaning to try my hand at book binding for a while, and had been doing a fair amount of searching on pinterest for inspiration. And at the same time, since the Doctor Who Christmas Special I have been looking at Tardis-inspired earings, also on pinterest. Somehow the took got mixed up in my pinterest feed, and before I new it, I had pins about how to make a replica of River's Journal in my pinterest feed, so when it came to decorating my new notebook the answer was,sort of, obvious.

I based my work primarily on this snapshot from the episode Let's Kill Hitler, and used 3 mm thick crafting foam for the outer layer. The choice fell on that mostly because I had it lying around and this wasn't a project that was supposed to cost me any money. I ended up buying new paint, because Tardis blue isn't the easiest colour to find. For some weird reason my local craft store doesn't have a paint called Tardis blue ;)

I'm not going to show the process of making the book. If you want to make your own from scratch you can find plenty of good descriptions online, or you can simply use a book you already have or buy one.

First step is measuring the cover and making a paper template the size of the cover. I used this for making the template of all the craft foam parts. On this template I added lines about 1 cm from the outer etches all the way round, and the 0.5 cm from the centerline, on both sides of the line. The template then had to rectangles, which I drew a line across to divide them in four rectangles of equal size. And those four rectangles I once again divided down the middle, so I had eight squares. The template now looked like the picture below.

Next step was adding inner squares into each of the squares so. The space between the outer and inner squares was 0.5 cm on my template. 

Next step was cutting out the template, which left me with 8 squares the inner squares and to sets of outer rings. I then transferred the paper template onto the craft foam.

 When cutting out the the lines on the craft foam I cut first on one side of the line and then on the other side. This allowed me to create the valleys on the diary as part of the foam was missing. It is a good idea to lay the foam on the book to check if more foam needs to be removed to create the valleys before gluing the foam to the book.

Once I was happy with all the valleys  I glued the craft foam to the cover of the book and after letting the glue dry I painted the book in Tardis blue.

Next step is letting the paint dry, while cutting the craft foam for the other side of the book. Once both sides are painted and dry you are done.

Here is what my finished book looked like. You wont get a picture of what it looked like before I started using it, because I started using it before I finished the back of the book. I am very happy with it, especially since I only spent an afternoon on it. It works for me and gets a some nice comments from geek friends, which is always nice :)

- trager