on notebooks ♥

I've always had this thing for notebooks. I'm very particular about them, and I have a special fondness for those with blank thick pages. I sort of collect them, not intentionally of course, but I always find it hard to resist buying a new nice blank notebook. For work, I usually use medium sized ones (A5), but for my crafts notes I carry around a smaller one in my handbag all the time...
A couple of my favourite ones are these two. They're italian, and I just love this particular design. The blue is my current "in-use" one and you can see how scruffy it's looking... I brought it from Florence a couple of years back and it's now full of notes, drawings, ideas and whatever else I can think of that is worth writing down. The yellow one is still brand new, also from Florence (brought by a colleague who recently went there), and I haven't had the courage to start using it yet.
For some reason, it is quite hard to find nice blank page notebooks around here (they're usually lined, or the paper is too thin), but recently I found these design sketch books that quickly became a favourite.



I'm going to start using one of these soon to replace the blue notebook that it's almost used up, so I decided it was high time to make something out of these fabric scraps. I was feeling a little guilty I hadn't made anything with them yet, and I've been wanting to make something zakka-like and with some crewel embroidery too for a while now, so this was the perfect project. The crewel designs are from here, and now that Blair has received her surprise I can show these off.