Someone was asking about my dream journals - what size, how do I use them, preferences, etc. I was cleaning up a book case this morning so I can move it to paint the floor. It mostly holds my dream journals and sketchbooks so I had them in a nice stack.
Here are, I think, all of my dream journals. There were more that I actually threw away during a divorce. I was disappointed that recording my dreams didn't reveal more to me about my interior life at the time. Still, I have all these, that's a good thing. On the left in back are the earliest - I used loose sheets of notebook paper, keeping them on a board and moving them to a binder. They seemed a little large, but it worked. Then for years I liked the 6.75 by 9.5 wire bound notebooks - they were easy find, not too large and worked. But the wire always bothered me.
Occasionally I would make a book for fun, to try a binding style. A few of those became dream notebooks. The leather one with a big button was made from an old leather skirt I found super cheap in a thrift store.
More recently I started using the Moleshine cahiers. They are slightly larger - 7.5 x 9.75. Folded in half they weren't too large and didn't have the annoying wire. But they had a lump from the fold and it was hard to write on part of the page. I try to not move when I wake, remember dreams and then write them down without moving. So I want to just reach over, pick up the note book and write. It's a little awkward and sometimes hard to read. Later in the day I try to look at them, between the lines I re-write words I think are too scribbly to read later. The lump in the page made it harder to write legibly.
Then I tried taking apart the Moleskine cahiers and making signatures of four sheets each. I was writing on them unbound and then binding them together when I had 12 signatures. For some reason I like the number 12 and usually stop there. The two above were made this way. I found the paper is way too fragile to hold up to the coptic stitch, my go-to. For the second one I put strips of paper in the center of each signature to make it a little stronger. Still it's annoying and makes it more awkward to bind.
This one is ready to bind. It's made from Mohawk Superfine text weight paper - it's about 6.25 by 9.5 inches, a size the paper tears down to. I don't want to cut it and throw away anything. It's a comfortable size for laying on the bed next to me, I can support it with a slightly larger piece of Davey board and clip it together with a space pen. The space pen writes upside down, a feature I don't need often, but it works really well. I know this will bind well because I use the same paper for some of my sketchbooks.
Here are some signatures beside my bed, spread out a bit so you can see the layers, and the Davey board that supports them. I keep extra signatures in my nightstand.
