Advice - Sublimation Notepads

[UK Printed Mugs]

Currently we supply our own A5 notebooks and build the whole notebook from scratch from printing cover, punching A5 paper, cutting down spiral rings to size, adding back board, adding clear plastic cover and finally adding elastic closer. We HATE building them especially when a client asks for over 50! Recently we have seen a couple of sublimation notebooks with fibreboard cover or felt cover. Has anyone tried these and which cover gives better quality? Do you get lined/plain paper inside? Are they good enough quality for store retailing? Tank you. Ps: We will of course buy some in at some point but advice would be appreciated first. Olly

[Bex]

I've tried both and not really happy with the quality of either of them. They both have lined paper but looks quite cheap because the lines are really thick. The thing that bothered me the most was the holes in the cover don't match up with the paper so the wires look distorted.

[UK Printed Mugs]

Your reply was very helpful thank you. There was one more notebook we found but trade price is rather high (about £2.30 ex vat):
http://www.sublimationtrade.com/medium- ... h=Notebook

Did you find any others?

[Bex]

I ordered a couple of those a while back (from coralgraph I think) They have a pocket inside so the back of the paper pad slots inside. They printed really well. As for the paper pad, 1 came with lined paper and the other was plain so I'm not sure what should come with it! I bought an A4 hardback fabric covered notebook from coralgraph too but had the quality issues. It had the same thick lines on the paper and the fabric had glue coming through it. Back to the drawing board!

[wayupnorth]

Currently we supply our own A5 notebooks and build the whole notebook from scratch from printing cover, punching A5 paper, cutting down spiral rings to size, adding back board, adding clear plastic cover and finally adding elastic closer. We HATE building them especially when a client asks for over 50! Recently we have seen a couple of sublimation notebooks with fibreboard cover or felt cover. Has anyone tried these and which cover gives better quality? Do you get lined/plain paper inside? Are they good enough quality for store retailing? Tank you. Ps: We will of course buy some in at some point but advice would be appreciated first. Olly

This is exactly what I do but I also laminate (roll) the cover as well. I use wire binding as it looks far more pro and can add a thumbcut if it needs hanging. A lot of faff but I can control the paper quality and also include 10 sheets of cartridge paper for sketching & drawing. Good profit margin, retail around £4.95+, so I think about that as I punch the paper, probably made around 1k over the years. Quite happy to manufacture for other people.....

[UK Printed Mugs]

Hi WayUpNorth. Do you hole punch the paper as well (for wire binding)? We buy in plain A5 paper (cannot find lined sadly and don't want to cut A4) and we machine hole cut but it takes quite a while. We sell trade around £3.85 (RRP is about £8.95) and they sell well but we don't make much profit due to the time it takes. I am thinking we may ditch the nice elastic closure we add to each notebook to save on time and costs.

[wayupnorth]

Yes, I weigh out 145gm paper for each plain notebook then punch. My poor old Magnum punch could only handle 5 sheets at a time at the end of its life. Bought the original model so the punch unit could be replaced but no longer available. Think Magnum were bought out and found almost identical unit from Germany which arrived last week. This (Binder S310) has selectable punch pins so I can make any size from A6 short to A4 long. A3 possible as the bed allows paper longer than A4.

I use mountboard from Lion cut to size for the backing board. Provides a firm base which people like. Handy having some of my framing equipment left so cutting large sheets is easy. Available in different colours but I find black looks great.

[UK Printed Mugs]

Hi. Sounds like we have very similar methods. We use a thick mount board for the back as well. We do place a really nice frosted cover in front of the artwork as well. These are A5 cut to size already and we opt for the thicker 800 microns - http://www.thebindingbox.co.uk/frosted-binding-covers/. Our electric binder/punch is super but I still think the profit margin is too small and we can't really increase price. I may try and find a paper supplier who could pre-punch the paper and also provide lined as well. I thought the sublimation ones would be perfect but it sounds like they are pretty naff.

[wayupnorth]

Your frosted cover works out at 20p for 100, my lamination is approx 10p and protects the artwork as well however I have to trim and punch so probably worth the extra 10p !. The laminator is an Ultima35 which takes 305mm rolls and laminates both sides at once, worth considering if you need to do up to A4 long or A3 short side. Gloss finish is superb.

Last time I bought paper was from ukpaperonline. They do bulk quantities and I used Neusiedler Colour Copy 120gsm, charged £18 to cut down to A5 and I bought 12k sheets. Sheet cost is around 1.6p so not cheap but very high quality which was the selling point. Probably time to look elsewhere.

Would have loved an electric punch !.

ps Have considered printing my own lines on laser....