I carry a notebook with me everywhere I go. I especially love how a notebook develops a patina as it wears and is used. After years of being unable to get myself to use a notebook for anything, I finally realized it was because I was trying to make a notebook perfect.

As a result, one of the main things that I look for in a notebook is that it's not precious, which makes it easier to be okay with my notebook wearing (and sometimes tearing) as I really use it and take it everywhere. Field Notes are about the perfect size for me, but I live in South Africa and can't reliably get Field Notes notebooks. After researching, I decided to make my own Field Notes-esque notebook, customized to suit my needs.

This is what I ended up making:

- I used recycled paper bags from my grocery shopping for covers. The brown paper bag's texture means that these develop a great patina as you use the notebook. It's also sturdy enough to keep pages protected and bound together. I use my dip pen to sketch the cover of each one I make.

- Cold press 180gsm paper from an old A3 sketchbook that I never used because it was too big (A3). I make each notebook with 28 pages. I fill roughly 28 pages of this size in about a month. That means I can easily organize my filled-up notebooks by month.

- Bound with two staples, open 100% flat.

- The inner cover page (front or back) includes fields for my name, the date I started the notebook, the date I finished the notebook, a contact email field, and space to include any other details that might help someone return the notebook to me if lost.

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