Recycling an Art Journal

A long long time ago, before I even knew what art journalling was I saw the most amazing hand tooled leather journal on I think Etsy but I'm not certain, could have been somewhere similar. I wont lie it was quite expensive but I wanted it oh so badly! They were made to order and took around 6 weeks to make, when I finally got the dispatched notice I was so excited, and it arrived, the smell oh my wonderful. The texture of the tooled leather against the smooth leather was divine, but the paper inside was a HUGE let down. You know when you were a kid at school and you had to use the toilette and it had paper that could only be described as kinda gray looking, felt like cardboard and painful to use, well it was like that. I have it pictured below but you cant really tell from that picture how bad it really is. When we went to York for the day with friends I came across a paper shop and impulse bought this most wonderful book of Indian rag paper made by Khadi paper's, I didn't really like the book it was a bit large and cumbersome so I hadn't used it yet. While moving rooms around (I am swapping bedroom and craft room) I came across the leather journal and figured since it was bound with waxed leather cord and signatures I could rip out the old paper and make new out of Khadi paper.

So after an hour or so taking the Khadi book apart and making pages I began to re bind the book, it was pretty easy to do until I had to tie the knot at the back, could have done with a bit longer length of cord but I managed in the end with a bit of fiddling and faffing. The new signatures have allot less paper in them but I only wanted a small journal and only intend on doing single page spreads and not double pages. Cant wait to get started in it but must finish the new craft room first as I cant find anything! Finished book pictures are below.