Look at this: investment companies, radio stations, and grocery stores are just throwing resources at you. |
(Also, we seem to have a lot in common. Maybe we should hang out?)
You'll need a good letter-opener, some reliable glue-stick, and a pile of junk mail. It's okay if there's print on one side and you can only write on the other. |
Yes, deconstruct the envelopes: don't just rip out the edges, but actually remove the flaps from where they're glued to each other. It's difficult and imperfect work, but you just want as much surface area available to you as possible, especially if you can write very small. I can crib micro notes with a 0.025mm-tip Slicci, so one triangular side flap to an envelope can potentially contain a significant amount of information. Otherwise, if you just use a regular ball-point pen, you can make up for this by incorporating a lot of "sheets" of paper in your notebook.
Align all the envelopes by the hinge of the upper flap and glue them together there, so that the whole mess closes more or less neatly. |
NOTE: As you'll see in the images, I did not think this through initially. I just bound these things together without forethought, so my "spine" is on the right. No biggie, but you may feel the urge of convention to keep your glued-flap "spine" on your left so you're always writing on the recto side of each "sheet." With mine, pictured, I will always write on the verso site, but I'm unruffled. I learned this flexibility in the military.
Some envelopes have printed insides, intended to prevent anyone from peering through them at the contents. Not necessary, but you can use one of these not for writing but for a "decorative" "cover." |
- Trim off the side flaps, if you find them to be in the way, or glue-stick them down to the print-side of the sheet. If you need to, once it's all assembled, shear off the sides so they lay flush.
- Rather than glue-stick, bind the envelopes with brads, staples, or a spiral binder if you have such machinery on hand.
- Decorate the cover with stickers, library receipts, fruit ID stickers, beer labels, clips of attractive people from other circulars/junk mail, etc. Just go crazy.
- In fact, if you like a certain cereal, why not carve out a nice cover from the cereal box? Or beer: you could convert a sixer or a case for this purpose and provide free promotion for your favorite brew. If you use a pizza box (make sure it's clean, obviously), you're getting that much more protection for your documents! The only limits are the trash you have access to and your own imagination!
- Make a folio or large sketchpad notebook out of the oversized envelopes that can contain unfolded sheets of paper or booklets. Those give you the option of incorporating other envelopes, as you can paste them however you like inside for insane amounts of writing space.
- Cover it with the thick-paper cover from a nice magazine and not only does your notebook suddenly look much nicer, but you may look literate (depending on the magazine you chose).
- Include one envelope that hasn't been disassembled except for the top flap, so you have a little pocket to hold things (e.g., business cards, bookmarks, personal notes, photos).
- Keep your eyes open for pens and pencils lying around on the street. Once you open your receptivity to them, the universe will guide these implements toward you and you can amass an impressive, free "found stationery" set.
- I wrote this post half an hour ago and I'm still coming up with brilliant ideas. If you have an old day planner and you couldn't fill out every single page (or most of them
— like me) but it's time to throw it away, how about this: slice out the pristine, unused pages and paste them over the printed side of the envelopes! Now you've got a nice lined writing surface and you've saved even more paper!
(Otherwise, just paste in the pages that came with the junk mail, front down, to write on the backs.)
I'm about to fill up this The Company Store catalog with stuff that's relevant to my life. |
And remember, the advantage of this little notebook is also its downfall: it looks like a pile of junk mail. That means people probably won't go poking through it, but someone may decide to be "helpful" and throw it away for you. Don't leave it lying around — keep it in your backpack or bookbag and they'll only think you're a low-grade hoarder. That's fine, as long as they keep their mitts of your stuff.
3 comments:
Make me one for my morning pages, please. No catalog cover, though. I want something pretty.
Absolutely. I'm composing an elaborate model in my head. It'll be fun.
OH I love this! I'll have to try this,
CA Glue
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