Notes on a Sherlock Notebook

My sister Alanna is a big Sherlock fan. Back in 2015, she asked me to make her a "Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes" doll, and I did, giving it to her for Christmas 2016, along with a Sherlock 2017 calendar, vinyl sticker, and a Sherlock notebook folder. I don't think she's ever been more enthusiastic about a gift I gave her than she was about that Sherlock fan girl kit. 

So, when I came across a Sherlock notebook similar to the one you see above on Pinterest, made to look like the front door of Sherlock and Watson's apartment at 221 Baker Street on the BBC show Sherlock, I immediately pinned it to my "For Alanna" Pinterest board, knowing that she'd like it and that I just had to make it for her at some point.

That point came about two weeks ago, when my parents and Alanna were coming to my house for my annual birthday celebration lunch on August 16th. We've been doing this lunch for years now, and we have the arrangements down to a science. Mum and Alanna prepare the lunch between them, bringing nearly everything they need for it in a cooler, and using my kitchen to cook and serve it. I always provide the ice cream to go with the birthday cake one of them has baked, as they have a two-hour drive to make from the little town where my parents live. This year I made homemade blueberry ice cream as a special treat for my father, who loves blueberries and all blueberry desserts. I was surprised at how easy it was to make: it took less than half an hour of work, only ordinary ingredients most of which I already had on hand, and no special equipment. And the results were yummy.   

We also always have quite a grand gift exchange at this lunch. As I usually have not seen my family since Christmas, I give my mother her Mother's Day present, and my father a combined Father's Day and birthday present (his birthday is at the end of August). I get my birthday gifts. Then, because my sister does so much work to make the birthday lunch happen and I hate to have her be the only one who doesn't get a gift, I always give her a token gift of thanks -- something thoughtful, but small and inexpensive, like a thrift shop find or something I've made out of supplies I had on hand. I've been doing this for some years now and the cost of the gift has always been under $6. I've given Alanna a pair of earrings, a Tree of Life keychain, a Game of Thrones cookbook (Alanna is a fervent Game of Thrones fan), a madeleine cookbook (Alanna especially likes baking madeleines), a totebag and matching tissue case I made out of a canopy taken from a broken Burberry umbrella, and a pair of Spode mugs in the "Christmas Tree" pattern (Alanna collects it). 

This year I decided her token gift would be the Sherlock notebook. I've been so useless due to the heat this summer (my house doesn't have AC) that I didn't get around to making the notebook until two days before the lunch, which was my actual birthday. I spent at least half of my fifty-second birthday sweating miserably in my attic workroom while I laboured away on this #$%&! notebook. 

Some notes on the experience: 

-- I used this YouTube video as my guide, and also pulled up a photo of the 221B door from the show to use as a reference. 

-- If you're going to make this notebook, don't let the three minute and seventeen second video I linked to above mislead you. It's hours of work. 

-- The notebook would have looked better with a perfect bound notebook, but when I looked in Dollarama for a notebook, they didn't have a suitable one, so I bought a plain black spiral bound notebook.

-- I expected that once I'd bought the notebook I could do this project with supplies I had on hand. It didn't quite work out that way.   

-- I didn't have cardstock as the YouTuber recommends, so first I tried using foam core board. Which did not go well.

-- I then used nine sheets of coverstock instead, which by my math should be around the same thickness as four sheets of cardstock.

-- Nine sheets of coverstock is actually not easy to cut through. It had been ages since I'd done any paper cutting, so it took a little while for me to summon the knowledge. I could hear my George Brown College art instructor's voice in my head telling me that the way to do it is make a series of light, precise cuts, scoring the paper more deeply each time until I've cut through it, rather than trying to do it one brute force cut, which will look very rough and jagged. 

-- I cut the 221B, knocker, door plate, and lock decals out of an old greeting card. 

-- Cutting the numbers and letter for the door wasn't easy either, as they were so small. I cut out a number of 2s, none of which were satisfactory, until I gave up and just picked the best pair. 

-- The YouTuber recommends buying a gold Sharpie for the decals. I thought I'd just make do with some gold craft paint, only to discover that it only went on the coated greeting card stock like a wash. I bought a gold Sharpie from an art store the next day.

-- Then I discovered that while I could colour the one decal that had been "painted" with the gold paint very well, the marker wouldn't work on the other decals. I then did a base coat of gold craft paint on the other decals to prep it for the Sharpie, and reflected crossly that I probably could have painted them successfully with the craft paint if I'd tried painting it in multiple layers, saving myself the trip to the art store and the expense of the Sharpie when it was the day before my birthday lunch and I had cleaning to do and blueberry ice cream to make.

-- The YouTuber made a door frame, glued it onto the notebook, then painted the entire notebook black, then did the decals, the Mod Podged the notebook. Since my notebook was already black and the shade of black craft paint I was using went well with the black of the notebook, it did not seem necessary to paint the notebook at all. I made the door frame first, including the decals, Mod Podged it, then simply glued it onto the notebook, weighted it down with my volume of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, and left it overnight.  

The result you see above. The notebook looks rougher and more amateurish than I would have liked, but as I told Alanna, the door on the show looks distressed, so it's more artistically accurate this way. 

Alanna seemed very pleased with her little gift, and told me that while the calendar is long gone, she still has the doll, the notebook folder, and the sticker from her fan girl kit, so this new notebook made a nice addition to the set. I was very encouraged with regards to my plan for her Christmas present this year, which involves another fan girl kit for another one of her favourite TV shows. Watch this space for details on that! 

Owl Inspiration

My mother is extremely hard to buy presents for. She's 84, has a houseful of stuff, usually doesn't want or need anything more, and is also extremely picky. I have many anecdotes of times when she asked for something specific, I took pains to get her exactly what she said she wanted, and she still wasn't happy with it. I'm generally good at conceiving and preparing presents for people and don't have much trouble coming up with ideas for any of the other people on my list, but it's a challenge to come up with a Mother's Day, birthday, and Christmas present for Mum every year. 

Fortunately there are a few ideas or idea-generating techniques I can fall back on. While the clothes I've bought or made for her have almost never passed muster with her, I am good at picking out jewelry that's to her taste, so I can give her a new pair of earrings, a brooch, or a necklace occasionally. She likes movies, so DVDs can be a good option. She loves to garden, so something for her garden makes a good gift for Mother's Day. She also has some use for notebooks and notecards. Two other possible avenues are Irish/Celtic things, or owl stuff. Mum's ancestry is over half Irish, she was brought up by her Irish-born maternal grandparents, and she has always felt very connected to her Irish roots and likes Irish things. Mum thinks owls are very cute ("They're wise, and they have big eyes,") so all year round, whenever and wherever I shop, I keep an eye out for Irish things or cute, useful owl-themed items that she might like. Over the years I've given my mother an owl brooch, owl fabric tote bags, an owl trivet, owl potholders, an owl tea towel, a red plastic owl kitchen timer, and an owl cushion I knitted for her. 

If I'm stuck for an idea I go to Winners or Home Sense or some such store or browse around looking for something she might like and be able to use, which often works. If I'm really stuck, I can ask my mother directly what she wants, though I prefer to surprise her and sometimes even she can't think of anything she wants. 

This year when casting about for a good Christmas gift idea, I thought owl stationery might be a good direction. Perhaps I could get her an owl notebook, owl letter paper or notecards and envelopes, and maybe even an owl pen to go with them. I searched online but couldn't find anything suitable in the way of an owl notebook or owl notecards. Then it occurred to me that perhaps I could make her some stationery using stencils.

 

 

 

 

Dollarama has carried a cute little owl stamp set for several years, and I had always thought of my mother whenever I saw it, but never bought it because I didn't think she'd have a use for it. Then when I came up with the idea of making a stationery set for my mother, I thought it would do very well for the purpose, so I bought it. But when I experimented with it, I was disappointed. I couldn't seem to get the kind of clean, sharp images I wanted with it. It was much more a child's arts and crafts plaything that anything that was going to produce the level of artwork my mother would approve of. I dumped the owl stamp set in the cardboard box of kids' art supplies I keep on hand for when children visit me, and went back to the stencilling board. After first looking in Michaels for an owl stencil of the right size, I purchased the stencil above online. 

 

 

 

I had plenty of card stock, watercolour paper, and envelopes on hand for the notecards, plus a reasonable selection of craft paint for the stencils. I tried to find an inexpensive notebook with a plain cover that could be stencilled, but didn't have any luck with that. As for pens, I searched all the stores within walking distance of my house, then bought the set of four you see depicted above online. They're quite cute, and while I had my misgivings about their potential quality, when they arrived and I tested them, I was pleased to find that they write fluidly, are comfortable to grip, and feel well-balanced in the hand. 

 

 

      

When it came time to make the cards, I decided I would make 10 cards in a smaller 3.5" x 6.5" size and 10 in a larger 5.5" x 7.5" size, given that I had envelopes in both sizes on hand. To make the cards, I cut card stock to double the size of the intended card and folded it, then cut 24 corresponding frontispieces out of watercolour paper which I could attach to the folded notecards with double-sided plastic tape once I had the stencilling done. Because I could also use the front or the back of the watercolour paper frontispieces for stencilling unless a particular piece had a watermark on it, this gave me a fairly generous amount of leeway for screwing up during the stencilling process, which I was confident I would need. 

I was right about that. I enjoyed the stencilling process, but it wasn't without its moments of sick dread, when I was sure the results were going to look bad. Putting on my painting shirt and mucking about with paint took me back to my art school days of over twenty years ago, when both my classroom and homework hours made me feel like a little kid, happily playing with art supplies, while also at the same time hoping anxiously that the results didn't look like something a little kid would produce.

For the smaller cards, I chose two shades: cerulean blue and silver sterling. To keep two or more shades of paint pure and distinct when stencilling, one would probably have to stencil the different colours separately. Being that I was working on this project on Christmas Eve and was pressed for time, I did both shades at once, which resulted in some blending of the shades, but I thought it made for a prettier and more interesting look than two flat shades would have done. Doing colours separately or together could be a design choice, depending on the effect one wants. What wasn't a design choice was the bleeding of colours over the defining lines of the stencil. It's crucial to make sure that one doesn't use too much paint when stencilling, as one wants a clean, sharp image. 

I did all twelve of the smaller frontispieces, flipping some over for a second chance when necessary, then selected the ten best pieces, photographed above. I was modestly pleased with the result. I also think I did a pretty good job of centering the images given that I didn't do any measuring or marking -- I just eyeballed it.

  

 

 

 

Once the smaller frontispieces were done and set aside to dry, I began work on the larger set. For the bigger cards, I chose leaf green and spun gold paints, and the larger owl stencil. The combination worked less well than the blue and silver of the smaller notecards, probably because the gold was too light a shade to have the visual impact it needed. I got the bottle of cerulean blue and added it in to the mix, sometimes painting over the existing gold once it dried, sometimes flipping over the frontispiece for fresh start. When all twelve cards were done, I picked out the ten best cards, which you see depicted above. They didn't look so bad in the end, though I still think the smaller cards turned out better.

 

 

Once the frontispieces were dry and I'd assembled the cards by sticking them in place on the folded notecards, I packed them and the owl pens in a box I had on hand, one that had been the box for a fancy photo album I'd been given. It was just the right size for this set, and made for both convenient storage and decent presentation.

I think my owl stationery set idea translated into reality fairly well, and that the result is something my mother will at least not be embarrassed to fill with her still-perfect old school elementary schoolteacher's script. The set doesn't quite have the level of professional design and polish I was hoping to achieve, but it's cute and workmanlike.