Making your own sketchbook

This post is an intro to the new tutorial on making your own sketchbook. I won't be showing any of the tutorial since you can find it's tab under the header above. What I am going to show are a few, certainly not all, of the sketchbooks that I have made.

 In Maine we used to have a lot of "shoe shops" where shoes were handcrafted and hand stitched. The end result of the closings of all these shoe shops is a lot of leather. I have trash bags filled with leather so I thought I would cover a few sketchbooks. The 8 with a line through it is my "mark". It is supposed to represent back to back B's. This book is made with watercolor paper and has an elastic fastener knotted inside the back cover for easy closure.

This is a small purse sized sketchbook for when I am out and about and find myself waiting or seeing something I need to sketch.

This is a sketch done while waiting for Brian.

This is a travel sketchbook with removable signatures

This is a signature being removed. This way I can keep the cover and just replace the signatures (4 pages each) which can later be incorporated into a bound book.

This is the first sketchbook I made. It has a leather cover with the "book" part glued into the front and back covers.

I used sketch paper, tracing paper, and brown paper. Some of the brown pages were made to fold out double width.

This book ( below) is the one I used for samples of my surfaces or grounds.

You remember this one. This is the current one that is pages from being filled.

This was a gift from Judith and has double coptic binding.

An older watercolor book with the stitching right through the leather.

I must have given this away because I can't find it. Very nice? Hope whoever has it is enjoying it.

This was a felted purse I made in a workshop Judith and I attended on Deer Isle. I ended up cutting it open and using it to cover a sketchbook.

This was a gift for a friend who lives in Arizona. I really like this closure.

Well, I guess that's the end of the fashion show. For those of you who suffered through it, you now have a chance of getting one the sketchbooks I made for the tutorial. One is coptic bound and the other is a great accordion traveling sketchbook. Leave a comment and which sketchbook you want.

Covered in gelli printed paper I made with Judith

Coptic binding

Coptic left and accordion travel book right.