Finding Joy in Crafts

18 Apr, 2026

I'm friends with a lot of artists in the common sense of the word, so I find it a bit hard to consider myself a "crafty person". I draw sometimes, I build things when I feel like it, I bite more than I can chew¹. As Austin Kleon so wisely advised: I am someone who crafts. Sometimes.

Back when I roleplayed a lot more I made a bunch of things for my character and my fellow players. Multiple nendoroid customs!² A replica of her personal notes! A travel brochure, and a physical manual for the card game I invented for the game! I really like bringing things from the fictional world into the real one, even if they're not perfect. There's a kind of charm in the imperfection of handmade things.

When I play games, or when I engage in a story that has any kind of visual component, I tend to fantasize about details. The jewelry a character is wearing, a notebook with a specific design, an emblem that would work as a stamp, or just as a decoration... a made-up alphabet that would work as a font³. I think it's all just really cool.

Lately, I've indulged in making some things inspired by my favourite game: Xenoblade Chronicles 3. I'm a big journal and stationery lover, and when journaling has a role in a story it's really easy to get me hooked! Plus, Mio's my favourite character in the game, so the idea of owning a replica of her diary had been sitting with me for a while. I bought the official replica from the MyNintendo Store even before I played the game (I'm just sucker for these things...), but much like Roxas's Diary I am unable to use it because it doesn't feel right. There might come a day in which I think "I know, I'll use it for this!", but that day is not today⁴. So, since I swear by my Hobonichi Day Free, I thought... why don't I just make a cover?

At first, I wanted to learn how to sew one. Official Hobonichi covers are usually made of polyester and/or faux leather, and there are plenty of patterns online. Seemed like a sensible choice, except my sewing skills are still developing and I don't own a sewing machine either. Definitely a good idea for the future, but the goalpost was too far away to even try starting. Not good.

That's when I saw a reel on Instagram showing how to make a cover book out of a paper bag. You can find plenty of tutorials on YouTube too! It's actually quite easy, and it's a fun, zero-waste idea to just try and decorate something. If you mess up, it was going in the trash anyway. The original video showed how you can doodle on it, add stickers... something I very much recommend, and which I might do again for the heck of it, but that also solved my main problem: starting. Once I pushed myself to do it, I had my base. And if I messed up, I could just make another one!

The rest of the project took me several days, because I couldn't accept "let's just put some red paper in there and forget about the side pattern" as a solution, like some other people who made a replica did. So I scanned the official replica (the reference in the artbook is skewed, tiny and doesn't do a very good job), vaguely painted over it in Photoshop and then printed multiple copies of it at a fitting size to cut and paste on the cover base. This is the result. The white paper strips were... eyeballed. Yeah, I should've measured them. At that point I thought that if I stressed too much over measurements I would've postponed the project for far too long, so I just took responsibility for any imperfection. And then again, I could just make another base whenever! Knowing starting from scratch was going to be easy and pretty much costless really made a difference.

Disregard the fact that the cover is upside down in that picture: I actually did the whole job like that. Thank god it's symmetrical or I would've crashed out.

Now. I have a severe lack of 3D abstraction, so you can imagine how troubled I was by the thread work. THANKFULLY, a very kind soul (whose work I linked a paragraph above) documented his whole process, including a life saving diagram. It would've taken me so much longer if I'd tried doing it on my own, so thank you for your scribbled notes on a post-it! Wherever you are, I hope you're happy!

This is pretty ugly already, but it's nowhere near the final view of the inside. Which I usually don't look at, because now it's always on my beloved daily journal!

I was afraid it wasn't going to be too sturdy, but so far it has withstanded enough stress to bring it outside without stressing too much about it. I absolutely love it!
You might notice the bookmark is missing, and that's because... that thread isn't really a good pick for those kind of knot decorations. I was very much looking forward to it, but I'll figure it out eventually. Thankfully, I can always attach it later to the cover!

Another thing I got into recently is stamp making. I got a nice starter set at Migros and I knew I wanted to carve something Xenoblade Chronicles 3 related ever since I decorated my daily journal and realized some shapes are just not meant to be drawn on paper again and again just for casual decoration. But that's what stamps are for!

I drew the shape directly on the stamp. I haven't done this kind of geometrical designs since high school, when I sucked really bad at technical drawing. If you're any good at it, you can probably see why. Still, I bought a compass precisely for this! Back in January I wanted to do a really big stamp for this design, but I think this way it works better as a small info box frame. The other use case was just as a decoration on a single page, and at this point I've kind of gotten used to how it's been until now... you know?

It's rugged and imprecise, but that's why I like it. I've learned a lot in carving just one stamp! I've got some more ideas on the back of my mind, and I really want to gift some to friends. Time to stock up on one billion cheap erasers.

#learning #tips #videogames