HOW TO MAKE NOTEBOOKS! / Materials, Mounting and Cutting / Complete Step-by-Step Tutorial

[Music] hello everyone welcome back to another video so this week we'll be focused a lot on restocking because my sock right now of notebooks mostly it's super super low so i thought i could do a video where i'll show you the whole process and a more in-depth tutorial of how i do my notebooks i'll try this video to be as informative as i can and as complete as i can and i really hope it helps you and that you can start making your own notebooks for your shop or for yourself so the first thing i'm going to mention is the materials the questions that i get the most on other videos is the paper that i use the printer that i use and all that kind of things um so let's start with that first of all i just want to say that all the materials that i'm going to mention in this video are the ones that i use right now i want to make this clear you don't need any of the materials that i'll be mentioning on this video as we go i'll talk about other options that you can have that i used in the beginning in the beginning i didn't had a printer i didn't had a guillotine i didn't had anything so i used materials that i already had at home so i'm going to talk all about that of course the end result and even the process can be a lot easier with the things that i use right now but i just want to make it clear that you don't need them to do the notebooks that i'll be showing you first material i want to talk about is paper this is the ones that i guess most questions like what paper i use for the covers what paper i use for the inside of the notebooks and i'm here to answer you so for the inside of the notebooks i use recycled paper and i use normal printing paper like atgsm but you can use whatever paper you want so the paper that i use is from navigator and i started to use 100 recycled paper but i changed over time to navigator because even though the paper it's only 30 made of 30 recycled materials i know it comes from a more eco source and a more eco process so even though it's not 100 recyclable at least i know that the process of making the paper and all that kind of things it's a lot more eco-friendly and that weighs a lot on my decision as well not uh just the amount of recycling uh percentage in the paper so that's why i use this paper and i really really love it now for the covers i have a lot of questions of what paper do i use what gsm of paper do i use and um i use 250 gsm matte paper i always print in a3 sheets uh because i have an e3 printer and it's a lot faster then i'll just cut the sheets after printing and the reason i use 250 it's i tried with 200 with 300 and 350 before but the paper would break a lot um and i really didn't like that so even though my covers are a little bit thinner with the 250 gsm they don't break and the notebook has a lot more quality because of that then for printer i use my a3 canon ix 6850 um only for the last year i started to print my own covers i used to print them outside and i really like this printer the colors are amazing it can print like in 300 gsm super super easily um even though i print with 250 but i really really like it and the colors are really great and the quality is just amazing and being able to print in a3 makes everything a lot easier and a lot faster than for the mounting of the notebook itself i use a bone folder until recently and right now i started to use a scoreboard that i'll be showing you later in the video as well how i use it and how i used to do them before um and it's been a really lifesaver because it saves so much time because the measure measurements are already there then for mounting the notebooks i use a stapler i have one long staple but you can find a lot of models online and you have to find one that suits your needs there are tables that only staple like 20 sheets and staples that can staple until like 100 sheets so it really depends of what you need like if you want to make notebooks with watercolor paper of course you'll need a bigger stapler that can staple a lot more sheets because watercolor paper it's a lot thicker then i also use a press so i can press my notebooks after mounting them this allows the notebook to be more closed and not to open very easily like the cover and everything i built my own press you can buy them online i've seen a lot of people use like flower presses and stuff like that i just bought two wood pieces and i did the holes and i mount them together and it was super cheap i think it was like five euros for the press but it's super super easy you can do it yourself if you want me to do a whole tutorial of how i build my press leave it in the comments and i'll try to do that as soon as i can then i also use my big guillotine that's how i cut my notebooks it can cut up to 500 chips sheets of paper so i normally can cut up to four to five notebooks at the same time and that made my lives so much easier because i can produce the notebooks a lot a lot faster um and a lot easier and that's basically all for the materials uh right now i'll start printing the notebooks and i'll take you with me throughout all the process and i'll also show you how i make things exactly and other ways you can make them if you don't have the materials that i have right now if you have any questions about the materials that i use that i didn't explain until now in the video please leave them in the comments and i'll try my best to answer them so yeah let's get into it i told you i print an a3 so i can fit four a6 notebooks in one sheet and two a5 notebooks and another one uh so i set them up like this on photoshop and i create some lines so i know where to cut later and since i already have this all set up i just need to set it to print this is normally the face that takes the longer because it's a lot of covers so let's go these are now printing and now we wait first i print all the fronts of the covers and then i basically turn all the papers and print the backings these are still printing so what i normally do is start counting the sheets for the inside of the notebooks so yeah let's do that so for the a5 notebooks i count a4 sheets and for the a6 notebooks i cut this a4 in half and i use a5 sheets like this [Music] i count 15 sheets for each notebook but this really depends on what you want i used to do with 20 but the notebook would become too chunky and it would open a lot let's count 15 sheets and divide them [Music] so so i'm finally printing the backs over here as you can see i'm only missing this ones but it's almost there so as i'm printing the backs on the other notebooks i'm going to start cutting this for cutting the covers i use this rotary blade thing instead of the big guillotine this one it's way easier to cut like this kind of sheets and it's a lot less time consuming because with that one you have to spend a lot of time like adjusting and everything so this is way faster you can also use like a ruler and an exotherm knife just make sure you use like a heavy ruler so it doesn't get out of place and make sure you be careful so you won't cut anything that no it's not meant to be cut you probably can see but i have like a very thin white line over here where it marks where i need to cut the notebook i normally do this lines very lightly um so that if i cut like half a millimeter um up or down not like on the spot it doesn't it's not very noticeable um i tried for that not to happen but it can happen so i do them like this so they won't be very noticeable [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] the notebooks are all cut um and the sheets are all counted so it's now quite later it's only 6 30 now and i've been cutting notebooks until they finish printing and they only finish printing now so you can tell how much time it takes for all the notebooks to to print it took basically all afternoon so yeah it's now quite late so i'm going home and tomorrow we are going to finish mounting the notebooks and do all of that fun stuff so see you tomorrow welcome to day 2 of restocking notebooks so the next step is scoring the covers so let me show you how i do that [Music] so right now i'm using this scoring board it has like a lot of marks where you can score the covers and it's an a4 size so i can fit an a4 cover in here it comes with this folding thing i my honest opinion is this is a little expensive for what it is i think it cost me around 30 euros i'll leave links to all the materials that i'm mentioning in the description if you want to check them out but it has been making my life a lot easier because the marks are already here and i'll show you in a second how i do them before getting this one i was using this bond folder and this little t ruler you can buy um you can do it with like a normal ruler this one only helps because the sheets will be on exactly exactly light 90 degree angle so it will be easier for you to mark them it will take a little bit of time because i will basically need to mark to measure the middle and mark the middle in all the sheets of paper so with this one it's a lot faster but you can totally do it with this i've been using this for the past year i only bought this like two months ago so yeah you do need to have one of these things uh i only started buying it when i started to make more notebooks so yeah i was basically using a ruler and you can get this like out of um craft stores and stuff like that you can find it very easily so with this one i basically had to put it like this i would measure where the middle will be and i would mark it with the bone folder and then i would put it like this put it all straight up and then mark with the bone folder like in the middle with this one is a lot easier so i just need to make sure it's all straight up here in this edge and in this one and then i'll just come here mark the spot like this little heart over here it's the middle for this side this is a6 so six this is a a5 sheet sorry um so it's 10.5 so i just need to mark it and it goes all the way straight over here um you just need to be careful so it won't move like places but other than that it's really fast and easy for notebooks i always do three marks on the paper and i'll show you later why i do that but first let me show you how i do it with the key ruler i was just mark like half centimeter one centimeter for the left and one centimeter for the right but since i have this tool now it's a lot easier so i come to these marks where you have like little spaces between them um and i try to put like the mark that i already have here in one of them and then i'll do one mark on the left like on this one and one mark on the right on this one and then i end up with three marks and now i have three marks like this and i'll show you how why i do this uh later when we fold the notebooks and now let's mark them all [Music] [Music] [Music] these are all scored so let's start to put them together with the sheets [Music] so [Music] these are all done so we are going to start stapling them [Music] so i used this long stapler that you see over here i bought it on staples so this was quite cheap i think it was like eight euros or something like that but i've seen a lot of people doing notebooks without this bigger staplers to know exactly where i need to staple i did like this white line on both sides and i aligned this with the line that i scored on the notebook so let me show you first of all before stapling i try to see if the notebook is as straight as possible with the covers and with the inside and then i put the stapler over here and i try to check the little white mark with the the middle score that we scored before so i have the little mark over here and i try to align it with the score that we have here in the middle because you would you want to stay cooler you want to staple the notebook on the middle score and leave the other ones without any staplers so yeah i just align the little mark with the middle score and i staple them that's it i put two staples in each notebook they are in the middle score and so is this one i think this mark really really helps so that way i know exactly where i'm stapling in [Music] so [Music] once i finish i like to do uh something that it's putting the the staples like down close to the page so that the page won't come out very easily i use this thing over here i have no idea what this is but i asked for something to do this and my dad gave me this so yeah i basically just press it down like this and they are now close to the page of course i try not to bend them like i did in those ones but yeah now the pages are more secure if you don't have anything like this you can also use like an exoto knife or the back of a scissor and do it like this so yeah it also works [Music] quick tip i just noticed that i was doing something wrong that it's something very simple but it's stacking the notebooks as you are making them i try not to stack them like this but i wasn't noticing because um this part over here of the staples can easily mark or leave like some kind of residue in your covers so i try to um to put them like cover to like inside to inside and cover to cover so that won't happen and yeah just a little tip because i already like scratched a lot of notebook covers because of that once all of this is done it's time for the next step that is folding the notebooks so let me explain [Music] it's quite sunny right now so sorry if the image sometimes gets too bright or something like that i went and grabbed like a base to put here so that the sun won't hit the glass directly okay so let's try to fold this one so what i try to see is if the covers match the little corners over here and over here like this can you see even though the paper it's off a little bit the covers will match so that means the staple will be in the middle of the book like this and to do that i just press the notebook down and with the bone folder i go from up to down making sure the notebook it's in the right place and fold it like this oh it's so shadowy sorry about that and then i turn over the notebook and i do the same thing on the other side and it's folded remember we when we scored the notebooks we did three scores so let me show you why we did that and what makes uh and what the difference it makes when folding the notebooks down so we did three foldings with the the middle one where we put the staples that you can see here and then with it two other ones one on the left and one on the right and as you can see they are here and on this one so basically what this does doing the three folds is that you get sort of a bind over here like a rectangular and it's way easier to bend the notebook because the cover is thick so having these three scores on the notebook other than making way easier to fold the notebook on this face but also gives you like a more nicer finishing touch i really like how it looks and i think it has it has a more professional touch to the notebook it has been quite a journey too until i got to this place with my techniques and making notebooks so i hope you appreciate all the tips that i'm giving and that can save you a lot of time and materials because i know the amount of time and materials it takes for you to perfect a technique so i really hope this video is helping so far and if you watch this far yet you [Music] it's press time so as you can see the notebooks are a little chunky so they need to be pressed so they can be thinner and a lot nicer so let's put them in the press when getting them ready to be pressed um leave them like this like um one like this and another one like this because if you put them all on the same side they will get bent so this way they stay like straight even with a lot of pressure on on top of it [Music] i know this looks awful but i promise it does the job so as you can see over here on the press like the notebooks look like this and this is how they look like with the books on top another question that i get the most about making notebooks is how long i leave my books my notebooks on the press so i basically try to leave them as much time as i can if i'm in a rush i try to leave them at least one to two hours but if i have time i try to leave them at least overnight so they are nicely pressed but it really depends on the cover that you are using on the side that you are using and also on the thickness of the notebook so if you do if you do a thicker notebook of course you'll have to press it um a little longer but i always try to press it at least one hour um so there will be a little bit thinner uh and it will look a lot better but yeah i basically tried to leave them as long as i can but for the sake of this video i'm just going to leave them for an hour or two so we can finish the notebooks today and not tomorrow so yeah they are now on the press for an hour an hour and a half so i'm going to take them out of the press and we are going to the last phase that is cutting on the big guillotine so let's go okay so this is the big guillotine this is where i cut all my notebooks um i'm using a cardboard over here because i have this machine for two years now and the blade stitch cuts very very nicely but this red thing over here already has a lot of marks and a big um sulk over here so um if i don't cut with a cardboard um the paper gets eaten because it has like a really big hole over here and the paper gets inside and gets eaten so i use a cardboard so that doesn't happen and the notebook sits on top of this cardboard this basically you can mark where you want your notebook to be cut and then when you when it's okay you just um roll it out and now it's like fixed uh so that the notebook won't leave its place and you know exactly like how many centimeters you're cutting okay let's set this up so i'm going to put the measurement around 14.6 so i can have a little bit of a margin i normally do all the same measurements every time i'm cutting notebooks or already know more or less which ones i can use now to put the notebooks inside i'm going to need to get this lever up so i'm going to rotate this one over here and you can see the lever it's going up as you can see over here i have the four note hooks and i still have space to put one or two more but i won't do that and i explain why so basically if i'll have to if i put another one or two more i'll need to release the lever a little bit more and as you can see it gets way too closer to the blade and when i was starting out i used to do that i used to cut as much as i could uh at the same time and i almost lost two nails so please don't do that cut last and don't be too close to the blade so the notebooks are now in place i try to put them back as much as i can so they um are touching the bar over here and the lever will block the notebooks so that they can't move like as you can see they can't move at all so basically this will make so that when the blade cuts the notebook won't move so let's make a cut to cut i need to press this lever here this basically will make this one um free this is just a safety measurement so i press this and i come down with the blade and this normally i really need to push this looks easy but i have to do like a lot of strength to cut the notebooks now we need to release them so let's turn the lever [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so that is it for today's tutorial which i'm sure it's already super super long but as i said in the beginning of the video i wanted this tutorial to be as complete as i could and it's a really time consuming product to do but i love it i love the fine result i love all the process even if some tasks are a little more tedious i really really like it and i get in the zone and it's just one of my favorite things to do so i hope with this video you get inspired and motivated to start as well if you are afraid because you don't have certain materials don't worry i also started with just a ruler an exotic knife and stuff like that so i'm going to end this video here if there's something that i didn't mentioned in this video please leave the a question in the comments or something like that all the materials that i mentioned throughout the video will be linked in the description most of the products that i bought are from amazon so i'm going to leave all the links to all the products so you can check that out check them out and buy them if you want i've been making notebooks for two years now so i feel like already improved a lot and yeah i really hope that can help you see you guys next video and i hope you enjoyed this one so yeah talk to you soon also if this is the first video you're seeing from my channel please go subscribe if you enjoyed this video so talk to you soon [Music] bye [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: aPenas Illustrator

Views: 202,611

Rating: 4.9478312 out of 5

Keywords: studio vlog, illustrator, illustrator life, freelancer, freelancer life, illustration, studio tour, studio life, life of a freelancer

Id: LhWQSOVVKLg

Length: 35min 20sec (2120 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021