Create Your Own Sketchbook for Drawing On The Go

1. Introduction : Hi, my name is Elizabeth and welcome to my class. Create your own sketchbook for drawing on the go. And being able to create anytime, anywhere became a really important part of my art practice. I want to share that with you. I've been teaching art since 2005, and I am so excited to share my passion for handmade sketchbooks with you. I am an artist, a high school art teacher. And then 2020, I began teaching classes on Skillshare. I love working with students of all ages and sharing new techniques that inspire students to explore art-making in new ways. Finding the time to make art can be extremely challenging. I have experienced periods in my artistic journey where I didn't make art at all. And when I was in those moments in life, everything else that Mike felt a little off. So I began searching for ways to incorporate art-making on a regular basis into my life, no matter how busy it was, no matter what I was doing. At that point, I began searching for new ways to ensure that art-making was a regular part of my day-to-day life, no matter how busy things God. And along the way, that has meant embroidering in the school pickup line or watching Skillshare classes or YouTube videos of artists that I love following during meal prep throughout the day. And it's been great, but it's a consistent practice. What I've discovered is that I need art materials that are ready to go. Then I can take with me anywhere because I'm all over during my busy day. It begins by having easily accessible ways to create and materials that are ready to grab and go. So join me in this class is we make small handmade sketchbooks that you can take anywhere and everywhere to ensure that you too, can create art no matter how busy your life may get. Let's hand it over to the next lesson to find out more about our class project. See you there. 2. Class Project: Thanks for joining me in our next lesson for the busy artist on the go, it is so important to have ways to create in the time and space you have available. And a small handmade sketchbook is the perfect way to go about that. Our sketchbooks are going to be 4 " by 4.5 " in size. The perfect size to fit in your pocket, your purse or backpack, cubby in your car, just to have with you anywhere and everywhere. And they're so easy to make. You can make many and have them all over them, or just make one and an art kits so you're ready to head out the door. There are tons of benefits to keeping a sketchbook, especially one on the go. I found that it's a great place to record ideas. Maybe I'm not feeling like drawing, but I have all of these ideas that I want to work on later. So in my sketchbook, I write notes, I do quick little doodles. Anything that comes to mind that I want to save for another time. I also draw the world around me. So I find that when I sketch my life, I'm more engaged in my life. I remember those moments more. And then when I look back at the sketches, I think about the memory and I can smell the smells and remember funny things that my kids side where we were playing at the park or out of the museum. And the small size means that I can take it anywhere and everywhere, which is what I need. I am on the go all the time and I need my art materials ready to go with me. I've also found that sketching more regularly has increased my creativity because I'm constantly engaging in art-making, that the wheels are turning, the inspiration is happening. And it has really been invaluable to my growth as an artist. It's also a great way to develop your skills because we often don't have time throughout the day, right, to work on to work on these things. But if you're like, I really want to work on people drive. Recently I did the one-week 100 people challenge. And the only way that I could achieve that challenge with my busy schedule was to have a sketchbook with me all the time. So that whenever there was a free moment, I was drawing people and that might be people I saw around me. That might be people on my phone using the pixabay app, whatever it was, I was able to achieve the goal of 100 people in those five days was by having a sketchbook. And the feeling of accomplishment at the end of the week was amazing. And I saw my skills, bro, because I don't drop people often. And having that handmade sketchbook or I could just take it with me. Really, really changed the game for me. In this class, we're going to be creating a mini handmade sketchbook that we'll be able to take anywhere we go, we're going to discuss paper selection and binding techniques, and design and layout will be preparing our materials ahead of time, and then constructing our sketchbooks so that everything is laid out in very easy step-by-step way to ensure everyone achieves success will be using decorative paper to personalize the covers of our sketchbook, and then a bonus lesson. I will give you tips for how to pack your art kit. So we were completely saturate to draw on the go. After taking this class, you will have the skills to create beautiful handmade sketch books that you can use for years to come. In the resources section, I will be sharing all of the measurements that we need for our four by 4.5 inch sketch book, as well as ways to modify that. If you feel inspired to make more sketch books that have different sizes and dimensions after you finished the class. So let's head on over to the next lesson to learn more about the materials we'll be using to make our handmade sketchbooks. I'll see you there. 3. Materials : Welcome back. Now, let's talk about the materials we'll be using to make our handmade sketch bucks. Chances are you have most of these materials and your art supplies and we can customize it if not to work with whatever you have. I've also provided a link in the projects and resources section with an Amazon list for materials that you may want to pick up along the way. So you can use any kind of paper that you want to. I'm using a combination of Canson and Strathmore drawing paper that's 11 by 14 " in size and 70 pounds. That paper is going to get cut down. 16 sheets of four by nine inch paper isn't going to be the inside of our sketchbooks. We're going to be putting them together to create registers, which are the sections in a signer sketchbook. For the cover, we're gonna be using recycled cardboard. I have cut down just different cracker chips, cereal boxes to four by 9 ". And these work great for what we need for a durable cover or drawing on the go. Then we also are going to use 0 or a pushpin. Either one will work for puncturing are holes for our stitches. Then you're also going to need some scissors to trim up your cardboard and your paper. I also like to tear my paper, so I actually am going to use, we need a ruler also. I'm going to use my longer metal ruler to tear the paper so that I get the deck old edge. But I'm also going to have a shorter 12 inch ruler on hand for ease and measuring the different sizes that we need to measure it out before I began tearing it. The next thing we're going to need an embroidery floss. We're going to use embroidery floss to sew together our sketchbooks. This actual thread is six strands. We're gonna be dividing this into three, has, we don't need six for sewing this project in three works really, really great. You need a needle for sewing. I like using craft or embroidery needles. They have the larger eyes without getting too large of a needle hole. An embroidery needle with a larger eye or craft needle with a larger eye will be perfect for this project. We're going to want a pencil so that we can mark our measurements. And then we're also going to want a bone folder so that we can get really sharp creases. This is a bookbinding tool, but if you don't have one, you can use an old credit card. It'll work just as well for getting the sharp edges when we increase our paper. And also for doing some intense to get the folds for our binding on our cardboard. We're going to use our scrap paper from cutting this to make a measurement sheets for our different holes and our stitch marks. And then we're also going to want to have some decorative paper on hand. I have lots of decorative paper lying around from leftover paints when I do acrylic projects, or I just loved making decorative paper with watercolor and acrylic. So I'm just going to grab one of my sheets of this. You can use any kind of decorative paper that you happen to have on hand or any found paper or just solid colored paper, whatever you want to create, the decorative cover. Then I also am going to have a binder clip on hand. I like to put this on the binding of the sketchbook while it's trying just to ensure that that section really attached as well. We need a cardboard or cutting mat so that we have something that leaves underneath our paper to protect our surface so we can puncture holes that we're not damaging. The area that we're working on. We're going to want to have for paperclips. This is just an easy way to attach this to our cardboard when we're marking out where our binding is going to go and where our puncture holes are going to go also. And that's it. That's all you need for the class. Oh, I forgot. We need to have some glue because we're gonna be gluing or decorative paper to the cover. So make sure you have some sort of glue that will dry nice and good, good adherers for paper to cardboard. Any kind of White who is fine? I just happened to have a lot of PVA glue because I really enjoy bookmaking. And that should be everything that you need for the class. So it takes some time to gather up those materials and I'll meet you in the next lesson where we'll begin preparing them for our sketchbooks. See you there. 4. Preparing Materials: Welcome back. Now that you've gathered everything you're going to need to build your head made sketchbook. It's time to get those materials prepped and ready to construct our sketchbooks. First thing is we're gonna do is we're going to measure our paper and we're going to get it caught for torn into the sizes that we want. So this again is 11 by 14 ". I'm using thinner paper because when you start folding it and assembling it together into a sketchbook, you really want to have thinner paper, because the thicker your paper goes, the more limiting it'll be for you and how many pages you can fit inside. And we're going to be fitting in 16 sheets of paper inside our 4.4 by 4.5 inch sketchbook. First step we're going to make every 4 " across the page. So I'm gonna mark it the four, the eight and the 12. And then I'm going to line it up down here and do that again. Just to ensure that our marks are nice. And even for when we tear the paper, now, I really enjoy it doubled edge on my paper. So instead of cutting this, I'm going to go ahead and tear it. If I align my ruler up with each of the marks, I hold it down nice and tight. And then I start by ripping at the top. And then I just slowly go along. As long as I'm holding my ruler down nice and tight. This will tear nice and even and not have any weirdness to it. I'm going to save the scraps because I'm gonna be using part of it to make my measurements sheets in the end. Now I have a bunch of four by 11 inch sheets of paper, but I need for my knife. So I'm gonna go ahead and measure again. In Mark 9, ". As you become more experienced and comfortable with this bookmaking technique, you could end up using whatever dimensions you want to. The really great thing is there's no limit to how personalized you can make your sketch book as far as scale. We line it up with the two marks again. And I'm not going to tear the whole stack at once because I want to stay in control of the terror. Anything right? Cut your paper, cut too many sheets of paper and it doesn't see you nice and even seeming maturing. Alright, now I have a stack of four by nine inch sheets of paper. I'm gonna divide this up into four sections. The section inside a sketch book is called the register. So we're making four registers altogether. Sometimes when you tear the paper, the duck-billed edges like to make it a little harder to tear apart. So I'm gonna go ahead and divide this up into four sections, each. Just so I keep everything organized. Moving forward. When to double-check, we're going to be folding these all individually. So if you end up with more in a stack, you'll be able to correct that last set of four. Well, we're cutting and getting things ready. We're going to prepare a cardboard. So I have some more cardboard that I haven't cut down. Just so I can show you that process. This is where I'd switch to my smaller ruler just for maximizing workspace. Now, one thing that's good to do, I cut these. I just kept the box apart. But then now that we're ready to use it, I want to do some trimming. So I'm gonna go, There's a little bump there were the corners meet for the two sides. So first things first, I'm going to trim that off. The grieving like a sketch book says, they have lots of personality and character. So it doesn't have to be perfect, but it's made by hand. So you want to see your hand in it. And in all honesty, I am not a very technically minded artist. I really enjoy creating intuitively, but I also want it to look nice. So it's that fine mix of being neat and careful but not stressing too much about it. I'm gonna go ahead and mark 9 " that way. And then I cleaned up this edge. So that's where I'm going to mark my 4 " along there. And then I'm going to cut this. You can't easily tear cardboard. For these marks. I've made my measurement marks, but now I'm gonna go ahead and draw a line so I can make sure I have nice clean cuts. If you have a paper cutter, you are welcome to use that. I have one I just find for sketchbooks that because I tear the paper. This is the only cutting I really have to do. So I just go ahead and use my scissors. But paper cutters are fantastic. Also. Trim off that edge. And trim off that edge. Now we have our cardboard cover ready to go. Well, I'm in the cutting section of this glass. I'm gonna go ahead and cut down my decorative paper. So I'm just going to trim it down fairly straight line. One way. And another way. If you're using a solid sheet of paper that doesn't need any trimming, you want me to do this step? Cut that off because I won't read all of it. I'm going to flip it over so it's easier to see my marks. So again, I'm going to mark 9 " 9 ". Make my line for those. Now I'm gonna do my four-inch mark. I'm going to go ahead and put that out. Because I like to do a lot of collage. I'm going to save the rest of this decorative paper for future collaged projects. The other fun thing about cutting it upside down is you don't really know what your sketchbooks covers gonna be. Decorative paper. Alright, set this aside for future. Collaging. Our white paper, sketchbook cover, decorative paper. Now let's go ahead and make this section of our sketchbook. We're gonna go ahead and use some of our scraps that are actually already 4 " in size so we don't have to do any cutting for that. So this will become this in a moment. First we're going to prep the rest of our cover. So this is where we need our bone folder or our credit card, whichever you're going to use. So what we wanna do first is find the middle half of nine is four-and-a-half. And then I'm going to find the middle just so I can keep it a visual in my head. But I don't want to do any creasing on that. I want to build the thickness of the binding. So I'm gonna go ahead and measure a quarter inch out on the right and a quarter inch out on the left. So our binding is actually going to be half an inch that I'm going to go ahead and move down here and do the same thing. Find the middle just for mental reference. And then do another mark a quarter inch to the right and another mark quarter inch to the left. So our leftmost mark is at four and a quarter, and our rightmost mark is at four and three-quarters. Now, I'm gonna go ahead and connect those and make lines for four and a quarter and four and three-quarters. Because that is going to mark the outermost edge of our finding. So now we need to make indents on this. Whatever size, whatever side of the paper is going to be, where the fold is. We're gonna go ahead and press on that side. For ease of seeing this, I'm gonna go ahead and do it on the inside of the cardboard edge. But you could just as easily do it on this side too. Either way it's going to get covered up so it doesn't really matter. So we're gonna go ahead and put our ruler down, hold onto it in nice and tight. And then using the pointed edge of our bone folder, holding it like you would a steak knife, we are going to start rubbing it neatly along that line, using the ruler as a guide. Breaking it down that depth a little bit. We're not cutting it. You just kinda creasing it. If you were to do this project again with thick cardboard, like this sketch book, this is done with thicker cardboard. You would end up actually cutting it partway through with an exacto knife. So maybe in a future class we can talk about that to make one the size. For this class. We're going small because we want to have our sketch books on the go. So we're doing a little bit of a creased to kind of break down the thickness there and then we're going to bend it over front and back. We don't want to tear it and this is compromising the strength of the cardboard a little bit, but it's necessary to make the binding. Then we can go ahead and use our bone folder or a credit card to just kinda press along that edge. Then we're gonna do the same thing with the other part. Line up the ruler. Get your bone folder. Hold this down tight with my left hand. Start sign back and forth to begin creating that crease. In our cardboard. Check it, see if it's stone enough. Start moving it. Hold it both ways. Then once you've got it so it's free to move. This is where things get a little wonky. I should have double-check this more. I agree. Stick with that. Is okay. I can't bring it back. Oh, yeah, we can. Alright. If that happens to you, just kinda sit back into place. This is why the bone folder is great and squash down that section that needs correcting. Anytime we're working with a thicker paper or cardboard, we need to be mindful of what it's going to want to do. So now we have the foundation for our sketch book cover. We are going to go ahead and get our papers folded. So each of these is going to get folded in half and then put together into four sections or four sets of four. So line it up in the middle, squash it, cross to the middle, and then down and up. If you squash to the middle first, you're making sure that it's nice and secure in the middle and folded, folded evenly in half, and then squash up and down. Use your bone folder to just really squash it. You're gonna do that for all 16 pages. Then you're going to go ahead and put your sheets back together. Just like this. So four sets of four. You can go ahead and put your bone folder way. We're done with it for now. So the next thing we wanna do is we want to use those scrap papers. So because I was working with 11 by 14 inch paper, I have a piece of paper that is four by 2 ", which is exactly the right size for creating our stitching guide. So the first thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna go ahead and mark where are finding us. So it's -2 " wide, give or take. So I'm gonna put down my ruler and I'm gonna put a mark at three-quarter inch and an inch and a quarter. And then I'm going to slide it down and do the same thing at the bottom, three and a quarter, inch and a quarter, and then go ahead and connect those so that it mirrors are markings on her cardboard. Alright, great. Now I'm going to put a mark halfway. So this is 4 " tall, so I'm going to lightly mark 2 " for the halfway point, we're doing a pamphlet stitch to put the sketch books together. So we need three stitch sections across the middle. So the first one is the root of a middle point and then one closer to the top and the bottom of our sketchbook. Where you put the second stitch and the third stitches up to you? I wouldn't go any closer than a quarter inch. I wouldn't go any further than a three-quarter inch because you really want it nice and secured inside your book. So I'm gonna go quarter-inch on the top and quarter-inch on the bottom. And those are my guides for where my stitch marks we're gonna go. Then we have four registers. So we need four marks across the spine. So for this part, we're using such a small measurement. I am just going to eyeball it into quarters. Feel free to measure if you like. But eyeballing at the stage will be totally great. Then do the same thing at the middle. Break that up into quarters. And then again at the bottom. 123.4. And now we have made our sewing guide for our stitching. The last step that we have to do before we can move on to the next lesson is cut our embroidery floss and get it separated into sections. So for a pamphlet stitch, we need three times the height of our sketchbook. So we're gonna go ahead and pull it up for 123 and then do that again. 123 cuts. We will have extra thread, but better to have extra than not enough when you're doing bookbinding. Now, this is a sixth red section. All embroidery floss comes in. Threads of six. We only need three. So we're going to tear that. We're going to separate this into 3.3 and then slowly pull it apart trying to avoid getting entangled. That will do for registers 1.2. And then we're gonna do it again for registers 3.4. Separate it into three strands. Slowly. Pull it apart. Alright, the last thing we need to get out our paperclips and our sewing needle and our owl. And we are ready to move on to the next step of our class. Be sure to check the projects and resources section for written measurements I use in the demonstration videos to create our four-and-a-half by foreign sketch books. Now that are materials are prepared, we are ready to begin sketchbook construction. So let's head on over to the next lesson. 5. Prepping Sewing Guide: It's time, it's time to begin. It's time to begin putting our sketch books together. So this Measurement Guide is gonna go right on here. So we can go ahead and use our paperclips to attach it. For paper clubs might seem like overkill for this. But they get pretty wiggly when we start getting getting punctures going. So I just like to have a little extra support. Because if your paper slips and you're going to have, we might have some sewing problems later on. Alright, so now we have all of our supplies ready. We have our prep cover, we have our pages for inside the sketchbook. We have our cover sheet. That is gonna be our decorative paper that's going to turn this into something gorgeous and not just recycled cardboard. We have our needle and we have our thread prepped. So we took our embroidery floss, which of the six strands, and we divided it up into 3.3 and measured it out three times across. And now we're ready to begin assembling our sketchbook. So let's get to it first things first, we need our cutting mat so that we can actually stab into this. So we're going to grab our owl, or we're going to grab our pushpin, whichever you're using will work great. Now we've already marked the four spots or cross, where we're going to go into in three separate sections. So all you have to do for this step is to begin punching through where your holes are. And we're gonna do all of them at once. So we're gonna go ahead and punch in and kinda wiggle around, make sure that we go all the way through. If you were finding that it's not going through as well as you'd like it to maybe switch to some cardboard. And instead, this matte doesn't have a lot of give to it, but I think it'll be alright. I'm gonna go ahead and push it in at each of those spots, will wiggle it around a little bit across the top row. Same thing in the middle. This is helping to ensure that we have a nice organized system for sewing our pages into our cover. And then we're going to use the same guide to puncture the sections of our pages. So just double-check, make sure that everything went through enough. We're not using very large needles, but we do want to make sure that we actually punctured all the way into our cardboard. Be very careful not to stab your finger. Owls are very sharp. I get a little extra push on all of these. That is great. I'm gonna go ahead and take this off. Set my paper clips this side. I shouldn't need them again. Those out of the way. Now, we take off our guide. Everything is looking pretty great. I do notice that some of my lanes didn't line up quite exactly. I ended up puncturing on my fold. That's okay. Remember we're talking about making something that's got some character to it. So I might actually adjust those a little bit because the other ones look pretty good. This one looks great. That one looks great. I'm just going to manually hi ball in a different one for my fourth row and adjust as needed. All of this is gonna get hidden. So I'm just going to ignore that hole there and work with the rest of them. Now, set this off to the side. Go ahead and get your first section of pages. I'm going to keep it nice and lined up and we're gonna go ahead and make a new guide. Now, these hole punches holes for the pages. We want to have them right in the middle. So what we're actually going to do is create a new set of lines. So we're going to pull their paper. Doesn't really matter where the outside. And then we're going to actually create new separate holes. So this is a guy that's going to just be for our pages. This is going to help ensure that we don't get confused by all the extra holes over here. So now we have one that's just for the paper's section. And because we folded it, we can easily put our creased sections together and give a little squashed and make sure. And then let me open it up and kind of hold everything in place. We can go ahead and puncture through the folded section of our page, a register. So now this one is done. I'm going to go ahead and set that one off to the side. We're going to do all of them at once so that we can kinda stay focused on what step we're working on. I'm going to repeat that. I'm going to line up my guide. Make sure that we've got the crease. This is where in the past, when I was new to bookmaking, I would rush through a little bit and I would end up having errors that could have been avoided and sketchbooks that weren't as neat. So I really recommend taking your time so that you can get a nice and comfortable with this. So this stuff, this section, go nice and slow. Make sure double-check everything lined up. And you'll have a more successful sketchbook in the end. Alright, one. And then the stitch that we're gonna do for the inside of these is very simple, but very effective in putting together our pages. And if you're new to making box and sketch books, it's great that we're doing four different sections so that we can get some good practice. So I kinda puncture through and I pull up a little bit just to help it get through the thickness of the drawing paper. Great. All three of my sections are done. So now I'm ready to start selling them into my book. Let's begin constructing our sketch books. When we had an over to the next video, we are fully set to begin sewing up our sketchbooks, adding our decorative paper and having a beautiful sketch books so we can get out there and get drawing. See you there. 6. Sewing The Signatures: It is time to start constructing our handmade sketchbooks. So now I'm ready to start selling them into my book. I'm going to set these sections back off to the side, get out my thread, my needle, and at this point I can get rid of my cutting mat. But you're going to go ahead and thread it through and you want to keep a short section and then a long section. Again, we're not nodding us until the end. So I'm gonna go ahead and put my needle through my top hole. And we're gonna work from lecture, right? So I'm gonna go ahead and align my needle up with the first hole. Remembering that I had to adjust my life because I didn't triple checking cell. Alright, so I go ahead and pull my needle through and I'm going to leave a tail, a pretty significant tail there. Now, this version is going to have us doing the knots on the inside of the page. You can reverse it to do it on the outside. I'll show you how to do that in a bonus video. But for this construction, I like having that outside the inside. Then I'm going to flip it over. I'm gonna make sure I stay in my same lined up area so that I'm not stitching across. And then you can put it through that section. They jump out and then I'm going to find the hole in the paper. Sometimes easier said than done. And there we go. And I'm going to pull it up and I want to make sure that I don't lose that tail on the inside. I need this to tie it off. Then I'm going to go down to my bottom hole and find the same. Make sure we're staying in the same section. Careful not to get it caught on the edges. Then, now I've gone through all the holes once. I'm gonna go back up and I'm going to go back through my center hole. Which should be easier to do. Now that we have the pages in place. Take a little wiggle. These needles are pretty sharp, so make sure that you don't create a new puncture into your sketch book. Pull that nice and tight. Now at this point I can pull the needle all the way off because I'm actually done with it. And I have way more thread than I need to. But I just it makes me feel good to have a nice secure connection. We go ahead and not at once. This is the tricky part. You have to hold that not in place while you get the next night set up. So you kinda keeps swapping your fingers. You get your thread around because you really want to tighten up. So keep pulling that one. Not so tight that you're going to rip the page, but you want to get a nice double not in there. Then you can go ahead and use your scissors to snip off the excess. We have now sewn in the first page of our sketchbook. So now we're gonna go ahead and do the same thing with the other three pages. The Projects and Resources page. Be sure to check there for reminders about the different steps and information about the type of stitch we are using. If your threads get a little misaligned, just give them a snip. Like when you're getting a haircut, take care of those split ends. We're gonna go through our paper first. Never gonna go into our sketch book cover, leaving our tail on the inside. Find your second whole line that up. With your buck. Pull it through, don't lose your tail. Third hole. Backup through our second hall. Tighten everything up. Your needle. First night. Anchor it in place. It doesn't have to line up with the hole, but I like that. It just kinda gives it somewhere to sit. Makes it kind of helps it stay out of the way of your pages. Cut off the excess two down two to go. So here's a classic example of not holding it too tight, but guess what? It's only at one, not at this point. So I can go ahead and just pull it apart and give it another go. If you are like me, you get frustrated sometimes in the process. Don't worry, just walk away if you need to take a bras, go have a cup of tea, some fresh air outside. Sometimes the technical sides of art really caused me to get frustrated with myself. Especially when I'm doing something where I really want it to be a certain way as far as construction, like sketchbooks. So there we have sown in our four sketchbook sections. This looks great. I have a little space in there to play. But before we do our cover, I want to make sure that we give our sketchbook kind of a good extra squash. So I'm gonna go ahead and grab my bone folder. I'm just going to open this up and really kinda pushed down. Be careful. I don't want to rip out my stitches, but I do want to help everything just kinda sit as nicely as possible inside the spine. There. Next we're going to be adding our decorative paper to personalize our cover. 7. Attaching The Cover: We're gonna be using decorative paper to cover our sketchbooks. I have tons of decorative paper on hand because I really love making decorative paper. You could also use paper that you have. Fun printed paper. You could use recycled paper or you could use solid colored paper. The choice is up to you so that we can glue that to our covers to really give it that finishing touch. Now this is the fun part. This is where it goes from flu, I made that too. I made that. So what we're gonna do is we're going to add decorative paper to the cupboard and then we can decide how we want to handle the inside. Sometimes seeing the inside cardboard is really nice. It kind of gives it a reminder of the fact that we made this from scratch. Like this is something we created ourselves. Sometimes you just kinda wanna have the beauty from the inside, wrap around. So any kind of decorative paper you have is great. This is just really thin drawing paper event. I think that I just put some leftover paint on. As a reminder, I have cut it prior to constructing my sketchbook. I cut this to the same size as my cover so it's going to fit pretty great. So all I need to do is flip this over and then I'm going to be using my PVA glue. You can use any kind of white glue you have. You have two options. You can just kinda put it on and squash it down and then let it dry. Or you could paint out in the glue if you wanted to. So depending on what kind of artist and creator you are, go with what works best for you. We do want to make sure that we don't have excess glue that squishes out too much. We're going to let these dry overnight. So they're going to be really well and adhered. So if a little glue squishes out, we can kinda separate our pages out again. It'll be alright. This paper is pretty thin, so I want to make sure that I'm being pretty gentle with it. So I like to put the glue around the outside edge and then kind of start to fill it in, in the middle. I want it to stick really, really well because these sketchbooks, I take them everywhere. I am an art, anywhere you can kind of artist. And I want to be able to just have it survive. My purse, my backpack, my work bag, my car, my pocket. I want this to be a pretty durable book so that I don't have to feel too precious about it so that the good stuff can happen on the inside and it's not falling apart on me. So we're gonna go ahead and get it well covered in glue. Then we're gonna take our cover. And I want to make sure that it touches really well. So I've got it totally open flat. I'm gonna do this so that I can really make sure that I'm meeting up the edges. You could put the sketch book on top of the paper. I like this technique because I can squash it on ensure that my, that my binding edge is really well adhered because that's where all of the load of the bucket is going to happen because that's gonna get opened and closed a bunch. I also want to make sure that I can slide it to match up with my edges of the cardboard. Squash it down really well and makes sure all the sections are attached. If you want to, you can use your bone folder, but this red, it might lose out on a scrap paper if you're gonna use your bone folder on it. And you can kind of just to make sure you don't get any glue on your bone folder because it might lose out depending on how much Glebe applied. And I'm just going to pressing it out to the edges. You could also use a brayer. You had a berry that kinda bray over it to peel off that extra paper, makes sure everything is how you want it. Then we're going to close it up because we're kind of encouraging that paper to bend around. I kinda give it a little squash this way and a little squash that way so that it has a very movable finding. What we wanna do is I like to secure it with a binder clip. This size works pretty great. This is the same. If it's perfect. So if this size binder clip, it will or something similar clockwise like this. If it's right over the binding and just kinda holds that edge in tightly while it dries. And then what I like to do is use a really heavy book, just a squash it down. Just to kinda give gravity a little extra help. I am also a high school art teacher. I have a lot of and a lover of art history. So I have a lot of giant art history texts. It provides a really great weight. And then I will just let this sit and tell everything is dry and set and then I can check it in the morning. So this is what it will look like when it's all done. Cover is nice and secured. I've got all of my bound pages. I can flip through and draw to my heart's content. I can't wait to take this out and about and draw into it, bring it back and maybe paint into it too, depending on what paper you put into it. This would be great if you were doing a field journal, this would be really fun for just sketching on the go. If you wanted to do some quick sketches or some quick watercolors. If you use paper that can handle that, there'll be awesome. And you can decorate this further. You can add stickers, you could add Marker Details. You could glue another sheet of paper onto the inside covers to add another element of personalization to it. There you have it. You have successfully created your very own handmade sketchbook for drawing on the go. I hope you are as excited about this as I am. I know we have to wait for the glue to dry, but when we check on them tomorrow, there will be so fun because you'll be able to begin your next phase as an artist, drawing anywhere and everywhere you go. So let's head on over to the last lesson for some final thoughts as we wrap up our class. See you there. 8. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for taking this class and creating a sketch book for drawing on the go. I hope you had as much fun as I did. Wait to see how your sketchbooks turned out and what you used for your decorative paper. So please take the time to head on over to the projects and resources section and click on the Create Project button. So you can share your sketchbook in the student gallery. And you can update your project anytime and share how you are using your sketchbook out and about in the world. I would love to see everyone drawing all over the place. I hope you'll take the time to share a project and also update us on your journey as a sketch or on the go. I'd also love to feature your artwork on my Instagram page. Feel free to leave her Instagram account name in your projects section notes so that I can share your work and tag you and celebrate the amazing sketchbook you have created. And if you post your own artwork online, please be sure to tag me and use the hashtag Elizabeth welfare Skillshare so that I can find it online and continue celebrating your success in our class. One thing that's very important to me as a teacher is feedback from my students. I love hearing how the class went for you as I continue to grow as an online teacher and consider how to continue improving my classes and adjusting things to best meet the needs of my students. So I would really appreciate it if you wouldn't mind taking the time to leave a review. It is a great way to connect as the class is wrapped up and find out how things went for you. And just learn more about what my students want to see as I move forward on this journey. Also, if you want to stay up-to-date on my newest classes, be sure to click the follow button above. And that way you will get notified every time I post a new class or any exciting announcements get made through the discussions I share with my followers. I would love to continue this art journey with you and stay in touch. So thanks again for joining my class. I can't wait to see your handmade sketchbooks and how you use them out in the world. I hope to see you in a future class. Until then.