The easiest journal you'll ever make
If sewing signatures into a cover puts you off, this simpler method makes a beautiful journal that opens completely flat.
Dear friend,
If you've always wanted a proper hardcover journal but the moment you picture sewing each signature into the cover — the measuring, the hole-piercing, all the other signatures flopping around while you work — something in you quietly decides to do it another time. I know that feeling well. I've made over a thousand journals, and for a long time that step was the one I dreaded most.
This tutorial is the method that changed how I work. Instead of sewing into the cover at all, you glue the signatures together directly into a single book block, then wrap everything in a fabric spine and cereal-box hardcovers. It sounds almost too simple. But the finished journal is sturdy, it looks beautiful, and — this is the part that gets me every time — it lays completely flat no matter where you open it.
There are a few things worth knowing before you start, and I cover them carefully in the video: why you must never glue the spine area (that unglued gap is the whole secret to the flat opening), why all your signature covers need to be exactly the same size, and how spine fabric tension quietly makes or breaks the finished book. Get those three things right, and the rest follows naturally.
If you'd like to make one of your own, here's the whole thing — start to finish.
Easiest Journal Ever! (Step-by-Step DIY)
What you'll make
handmade book·junk journal·bookplate·signature·signature covers·spine
What you'll learn
no sew·quick·upcycled·binding·covering·cutting
What you'll need
cereal box·distress ink·dyed paper·fabric·glue·scrapbook paper
Once you've made one this way, you'll have a process you can come back to whenever you need a new journal — five signatures, ten, large or small, from whatever's already in your stash. It becomes one of those reliable makes that just feels good to do.
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