#handmade sketchbook

[magnoliazul]

Here's a little project that I made to keep myself busy for a little while.

It's The Tale of Two Bad Mice, by Beatrix Potter (text and illustrations) - a delicious children's classic.

My favourite part was definitely embroidering the spine because it made me fall in love with embroidery all over again. I need to do this more often!

Overall, it's far from being perfect (I even forgot the headbands 🤦🏻‍♀️), but i think I still really love it.

[audiovisualrecall]

Made a cute rainbow/multicolor sketchbook with stiffened paper binding and some scrap pieces of canson mi-tienes and fabriano tiziano papers! Hopefully even the dark blue pages will work for colored pencil (since the paper is meant for that as well as pastel and such)

Had some fun using up these scraps and playing around with this binding method again, and getting to make a usable sketchbook even tho I don't have the 'right' paper at the moment was nice ^.^

[upmala]

about a year ago, i came across a booklet from the Wasteland 3 collector’s edition (long story, basically nobody else wanted it.) the content was not interesting to me, but it did have a nice faux leather cover, so i repurposed it as a sketchbook! just ripped all the pages out, bound a variety of sketching paper, watercolour paper and coloured paper and glued it all together. the endpapers are recovered soviet schematics for some sort of electronics - i think they add nicely to the post-apocalyptic vibe.

(i’m not a bookbinding pro by any means, so it’s wonky in tiny ways, don’t judge me)

[herearedragons]

It’s done!!!

There are some rough edges and the spiral isn’t perfectly smooth (also the gold paint is already peeling from the front cover, but that’s what I get for using plastic as a base), but it’s definitely usable and it looks awesome. Considering I’ve literally never done this before, I’m really happy with the results.

you can check out the full process of making this thing in this post

[cricketdrawings]

I should stop starting new sketchbooks but I made one with some old cotton rag paper I saved for way too long and it makes for some great watercoloring!

[zany-panda]

Japanese Binding Sketchbooks

Watercolour paper inside

The covers are made from paper bags.

Follow me on Instagram @zany.panda

[sporecase]

Finished products of the moss embroidery I was working on the other day! ✨

[lady-wallace]

Mother’s Day Journal Sale!

I’m running a sale on custom journals and sketchbooks, so if you would like to get a custom gift for Mother’s Day, check this out!

All in stock journals are also currently 30% off if you see something you like among those! 

Custom Journals

Custom Sketchbooks

SHOP HERE!

Please help me out by reblogging and sharing as well <3

[yellowmelle]

I made a LOT of sketchbooks!

Reminiscing and remembering when I used to make and sell handmade sketchbooks... just realized that there must be 70+ of these sent out in the world and I wonder what amazing things must have been drawn and painted and written into them! 🙀

[andramariestudio]

Birbfest 2024 Day 21 Pyrrhuloxia.

[kalindamage]

This is super short notice (my digital anxiety will always be my worst enemy... along with the tumblr app not wanting to post my photos) but I'm tabling at a small art show in Calgary Alberta that features a lot of unique artists that might not get an opportunity to show their stuff otherwise.

I make handmade dice and various other dice related things, also with sketchbooks and scratchpads made out of 90s trading cards. I'll also be selling my novel, My Life in (the) Ruins, as well some merch from my pretend publishing company.

If any of this interests you, stop on by and see some fabulous art and awesome music.

[magnoliazul]

This was my first experience with sewn board binding.

It's been my favourite ever since i first learned about it, but it took me a while to figure it out - and i'm so glad i did! i absolutely love how it opens flat without loosing its shape, and how you can mix and match covers and spines.

This has been on my shelf for over a month now because I've been too scared of using it but the time has finally come!

[audiovisualrecall]

Btw this sketchbook is now complete! 😊 the endpapers at front and back are also two different colors, because I felt like doing that ^.^ And front and back covers are inverted. Happy accidents and using up scraps ^^

[its-short-for-jackalope]

greetings! i have made a thing! ✨️two✨️ things!

✨️ sketchboooooooooooks! ✨️

it took longer than anticipated (I've been trying to get this done since the end of last year, oops) but I finally finished putting these together today. all that's left to do is decorate the covers and start drawing in 'em!

they are slightly–moderately wonky and pretty clearly handmade, but I love them. gives em charm. these are only the second and third books I've made myself so I'm still learning.

if you're interested I'll drop a few more photos and babble a little about the process under the cut! (definitely not a tutorial if that's what you're hoping for lol i was winging it the whole time)

okay so we'll start with the little guy. this is meant to be more of a travel sketchbook.

I wanted something fairly small that I could take on the go without it being too much of a hassle, because I'm also hoping to get out more and like... go for walks to the park or the cemetery or w/e and try doing some studies and life drawing and such. or just get some fresh air and doodle while I make a valiant attempt to get some vitamin D.

THE PROCESS

both sketchbooks are made out of materials I just had lying around, but this one is even more "recycled" lmao

i took the inside pages from an old sketchbook, and about half of them had previously been used, so I went and erased my old sketches as much as I could (they were bad and low effort, so it's no loss I assure you) and that was a boring and frustrating endeavor but it was worth it because, well, I get to use the paper again! I did a very poor job the first time around, I almost never drew on both sides of the page and so many pages were just one shitty sketch and nothing else 🙈

i sorted the pages into signatures (tried to mix up the used and new paper because it'd annoy me if I had just like one big chunk of ghost drawings and then the rest of the book was good and clean lol) and stitched those together and then put just a couple layers of glue on the spine to hold it together.

I made the cover by gluing two pieces of thin cardboard together for each part (front cover, back cover, spine) to make em sturdier, and then I trimmed them down to size and glued the pieces to a paper shopping bag. I didn't have the patience to try flattening the cover under a heavy book or anything, so it's a little warped and will kind of open up on its own so I'm just using the binder clip to hold it closed. plus idk it looks cool!

once the cover was done and dry I just... glued it all together! added the end pages i cut out of construction paper to the.. chunk of book? the book brick? (is there a technical word for it when the signatures are all together....?) and then glued the other sides of the end pages to the inside covers.

now for the second book! the big boy!

this fella was intended to be the grand, improved follow-up to the first sketchbook I put together, and I started working on it right when said first book started running out of paper.

this one is the wonkier of the two but I think it's definitely a few steps up from the original, and I'm pleased with it. this is gonna be my everyday sketchbook, so I wanted it to have a ton of pages so I can use it for a good long while. I think it's at least twice as thick as my first sketchbook. 😂

THE PROCESS

...basically the same as the travel sketchbook, just bigger! the pages are sourced from a different sketchbook, one I started using in high school and promptly forgot about upon graduation.

fun fact: the end pages are covered in countless tiny little hatch lines that i drew by hand while I watched/listened to something on my computer. I don't quite remember what I was watching at this point, but it was almost certainly something from Starkid... probably VHSCC on repeat, since I did this part back in november/december. it might sound tedious but I shit you not I was thrilled to do this part and it was just a blissful neurodivergent turn the brain off and vibe kind of time.

the biggest difference in this process was doing the cover; it's not cardboard, it's some kind of particle board.. thing that was salvaged from the back of a busted picture frame. it is VERY stiff and sturdy and I did not cut the pieces out so much as score the board with my box cutter as deeply as I could, bend it back and forth, and pray it didn't break. 😅 the cover-cover is from the same bag I used on the smaller book!

most of the wonkiness comes from the fact that the cover is sliiiiiiiightly too small for the book brick inside. I had limited material for the cover so I couldn't stretch that at all, I made the cover as big as I possibly could, but I also did not feel like trimming the inside pages so that they would fit better because that would have taken FOREVER and also probably killed me. 😫 soooo the pages stick out a little bit, but that's fine and it doesn't bother me much. 🤷🏻‍♂️

and that's my two sketchbooks! finished em both up over 3 days after procrastinating for at least a month. and now that they exist I can finally draw again!!! been wanting to do that for WEEKS.

if you read all of this I hope you got something out of it, lol. whether you did or didnt, here's a skull for your troubles.

😊🤲🏻💀

enjoy!! <3

[cricketdrawings]

Paint pen sketchbook spread

[zany-panda]

New order fulfilled by Zany Panda.

Two journals with embroidered covers and one journal with hand-drawn bird illustration using acrylic paint. We used coptic stitch for binding the books.