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This reading journal was a custom birthday present for my grandmother, who loves to read—by herself and in a book club with her friends. I really liked this navy blue leather, which went perfectly with the embroidered blue fabric that caught her eye.

I made a new design for my reading journals and decided to give her the first one. Instead of just being the same spread the whole way through, these pages are numbered, and it starts with a few different pages to track your progress such as a TBR list, Recommendations from Friends, a page tracker, and a shortlist for he books you’ve read (before you get to the full journal entries). I’ve also included a fun Book Bingo to complete and to help you try new things.

As mentioned before, the cover material is a blue fabric with white embroidered flowers for the front while the rest of the book is covered in a smooth dark blue leather. I want to get better at this new casebound style, in which the text block is bound using the French Link stitch as usual, but the cover does not include a board. Instead, the spine is just a reinforced space equal to the width of the spine plus a little extra space (about half an inch). I’ve made notes for future books to be made with this style!

Such a fun project and I was super happy to see her face when she unwrapped this present.