Composeum

Showing off composition notebooks, hacks n' mods, and people who use them.

Friday, May 22, 2009

How to properly remove pages from a notebook. [Mods]

Starring Desk Frog!

Before you go dissecting your notebook, you have to know its basic anatomy.



See, composition notebooks are really just a big stack of wide sheets stitched down the middle.


That stack of sheets is also sewn to a bit of cardboard for the cover, then the exposed stitches on the spine are covered up with some tape.


So what you do to a page, including taking it out, could affect the page on the other side of the book.


Case in point: If you just carelessly rip out a page...


...it will compromise the strength of the stitch holding in the page on the other side.


And then you get an unsightly notebook.


So when you need to remove a sheet from your book, use a pair of scissors or an exacto knife and cut along the red line noting the margin. That will leave about half an inch of paper to keep the other page from falling out.

In other words...


'Til next time!

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Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Meanwhile, in Brad's room... [PopComps]

Dude, snooping through a bro's compy? Not cool.
Such penmanship!
Brad just returned from his Fight Club/Snatch crossover movie Snatch Club... It's a working title.
Turn to page 150 for a sexy scene with Kirk, Spock and a werewolf.
Jen, on the other hand, loves this stuff.
Brad also insists a real man can benchpress his own weight in beef jerky and fart the national anthem at the same time.
Brad has plenty of time to lean, but apparently no time to clean.
I like the colored tape on the spines. Noted for a future mod feature!
Now let's get serious. Babylon 5/Harry Potter slashfic GO!!

Remember kids, you can have an adventure just by reading.
Take a look, it's in a book!

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Monday, May 18, 2009

Our Notebooks #003 [Quentin Hudspeth]


Quentin left this very thorough comment on a post to my original call for submissions.
I use composition notebooks pretty much exclusively. I flirted with the moleskine jobbies when they started appearing in Borders, but they seemed like a waste of money. I need utilitarian notebooks to work with, not fine china.
[...]
The nice thing about composition books is that I can afford to have one for each project. Or more. Stories from the Shelter is up to seven volumes now (the ones fanned out on the bottom). I make notes in a journal style, talking to myself and working out kinks and such, so I can get pretty verbose.

Many of the books I have are Roaring Spring hand me downs from my mother-in-law from when she retired from teaching first grade. They have pretty good paper, probably a little thinner than 20 lb. It takes ink well from rollerball or fountain pen, but you can see through a bit to the writing on the other side, and you can "read" the reverse side with your fingertips. The paper is well-bleached, though, and the color has been stable for a good five years or so.


[...]
Of the books I can find most readily, I like Mead's offering. Ink shows through the paper a little more than for the grey B&P, and there is a little braille when I use a rollerball (one of the reasons I've switched to fountain is that it forces me not to push so hard).


You can find more images of Quentin's notebooks on picasa. Thanks again, Quentin!

If you'd like your notebook featured, please leave a comment with a link to your images or blog post!

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