A Sketchbook from scratch

In Simply Create I have been showing folks how to make their own 15cm square sketchbook.  I started with nine A4 sheets of cartridge paper from Hilary Beattie’s £10 paperpack.  I used 3 sheets of 100gsm, 3 sheets of 140gsm and 3 sheets of 220gsm paper.

I found some painted papers and various music papers and text papers. I began by ripping up bits of the papers and gluing them onto one side of the 100gsm paper. I used gel medium underneath and on top of each piece.

I trimmed these sheets down to cut the random edges off.

I painted all the sheets of paper, whatever gsm weight they were. On some I used a sponge and others I used a sponge roller. I used acrylic paints to colour my papers.  I randomly stencilled on all the papers.

I cut along the long edge of the paper to reduce the width to 15 cms.  When folded this would make a 15 centimetre square book.

I set aside 3 of the folded papers to be the outside of each signature.  I cut different sized pieces off one end of each of the other 6 pieces. Using double-sided tape, I attached one of the cut pieces to another of the painted papers. Because I had used the same colour scheme on every piece of paper the new pieces match in some way the original but disrupt the flow of the page.

I made covers by cutting 2 pieces of cardboard just slightly bigger than the closed folded pages. I painted a thin line round the edge of the cardboard on both sides.  I stitched the signatures together - there were 3 folded papers in each signature and then assembled the sketchbook with the covers.

I decided to use Florida as a theme for my sketchbook. I collected together bits of papers, photos etc to do with this theme. 

These pages have images from paper napkins.

The collage is made from the inside of an envelope, a piece of scrapbooking paper and a word. The writing from the previous page shows through. I drew dotted lines with a black pen on the white stencilled shape. And sketched round the paper napkin shells with a black pen. I used a white Posca pen to put the dots in the orange swirls.

I hope you have enjoyed how I put this sketchbook together.  Full details of step by step instructions on how to do this are available at Simply Create.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice