Creating Sketchbooks are very easy and these can fit your needs mostly the best. Thats why I made my own a long time ago but I never was really sure what the cover can look like. 

Now I had this creative motivation Idea and created this engraving design with illustrator.

1. Downloaded image from unsplash.com (commercial free image usage)
2. Used the pencil tool to draw the shape of the lightbulb
3. Used path offset to create same proptions but bigger shape of the lightbulb
4. Took Text to path tool and wrote the words that fitted most for creative ideas
5. exported as image to XCS

If you want more visible result you could redraw the full hand and lightbulb to create a vector engraving instead of bitmap.

Make sure to get a good alignment. I used the top line to get my sketchbook as straight as possible, or use a ruler.

Mine is very experimental result as I had no Idea it would look when finished. The stripes are printed to the paper so I really was surprised the engraving is white on there. 

I hope you like the Idea or get new Ideas to try with engraving printed or clean paper. I love it as its a resource almost everyone has at home.

~Anzy