Hack your Sketchbook with Page Alterations

1. Course Introduction: Hi, everyone. I'm Rose Weldsmith and welcome to this online course all about how to hack your sketchbook by altering the pages. I'm so glad you're here. I love working in a sketchbook, and I've been keeping a sketchbook for many years. But the book format can feel a little bit restrictive sometimes. In this course, I'm going to show you some simple alterations you can make to your commercially available sketchbook to make them a little bit more fun and exciting to work. I find it really fun to switch things up by adding in new pages made out of different kinds of paper, making pages of different shapes and sizes, and giving myself an interesting surface to work on when I come back into it later with paint. We will cover how to make alterations to three different kinds of commercially available sketchbooks, sewn bound sketchbooks, ring bound sketchbooks and concertina sketchbooks. Let's get going. 2. Course Materials: In this video, I'm going to talk about all the different materials that you'll need for this course. So first of all, obviously, you're going to need a sketchbook, and I'll talk about the different kinds of sketchbooks in the next video. Basically, there are ring bound sketchbooks, concertina sketchbooks, and Zone bound sketchbooks. And these are some of my favorites. I really like this Hanna Mora DNS for the Zone Bound sketchbook, and I also really like the Sewits of Brighton ringbund sketchbooks. Sea whites also do a Zone bound sketchbook that is basically exactly the same as this. So I would also recommend that. As for concertina sketchbooks, you can get different kinds of concertina sketchbooks. This is a mole skin, and I also really like the Hanna Mora zigzag sketchbooks, but I'll talk more about those in the next video. You will need a hole punch. So I demonstrate two different kinds of hole punches in the course video. This is just an ordinary hole punch that you get for stationery, and you may already have one of these at home. And this is one hole punch, and you'll see in the video that this actually isn't that great. I actually prefer using this one. Ideally, you'll have some kind of hole punch. You'll also need a bone folder, and this one is actually made from bone, but you can get plastic versions, and this comes in really handy. It's a good idea to have two different kinds of scissors. So the very small scissors are great for making very small intricate snips, and the larger scissors are good for cutting larger areas out. You have a paper trimmer or a paper gillotine, then you can also use that, but that's totally optional. I don't have one, but I can see how it would come in handy. You will also need a pencil or a pen. So I like to use this mechanical pencil, but you can use any pencil that you have or a pen as well, is also fine. A glue stick. So I really like these Pritt sticks, and I find them to be good, but you may have your own favorite kind of glues. Also need a ruler. You can just use any ruler that you have, really. The only thing I will say is that if you're using it with a cutting blade like this, if you have a wooden ruler, while you're cutting along, it can actually cut into the ruler. So in that case, having a metal one might be preferable. You may want to use a craft knife in combination with a cutting board, but this is also optional because you can also use the scissors. So you will need some tape. So there are a few different kinds of tape, masking tape, washy tape, and I like to use some of these slightly wider washi tapes and also some of these very thin washi tapes. But again, this is kind of down to personal preference. So if you have washi tape already and you don't have these particular ones, then you can kind of make do with what you have. And this is clear sticky tape, and this is the mat version. So you can also use glossy sticky tape, but this one's really nice because it kind of melts into the paper and it doesn't show up too much. And this is sometimes called Scotch magic tape, but you can also get off brand versions, which this is an off brand version, and it's absolutely fine. And also double sided tape that you can use as well. Lastly, you'll need some decorative papers. So you can use scrapbook paper. You can use painted paper. These are ones that I've painted myself, and you can also use things like old music paper. You may have other kinds of decorative paper in your stache and things that you prefer. So this is also down to personal preference, so just use whichever papers you have. And lastly, I like to use deli paper for when I'm gluing, so I'll use it to put my paper on top and glue on top of it. But you can also just use scrap paper. So if you have, you know, old bits of recycled paper or newspaper or something, just to protect your surfaces, really, from getting them covered in glue. But I like to use this deli paper. So those are all the materials that you'll need for this course. 3. Commercially Available Sketchbook Options: In this video, I'm going to talk through the different sketchbooks that are available to buy. The first sketchbook that you can buy are sewn bound sketchbooks. By that, I mean, they are bound in signatures. A signature is a group of pages that have been folded and in the middle page, you can see that they've been bound with little holes through the middle of the paper. And some thread. Then they have been sewn in to the spine. And the spine on this one is a fabric piece there. The way that it's all held together as a book is that they're all sewn together to that piece of fabric, and then the very first page of the first signature is glued to the cover, and the very last page of the last signature is glued to the cover as well. Like this sketchbook. It's a Hmller DNS sketch. I use these kinds of sketchbooks a lot. This is also a sewn bound sketchbook. This has a soft cover, so you can do this and it has a leerete finish to it, and this one actually has toned paper, so it's not white, which is quite interesting. And this one also has signatures, and you can see that this has also been sewn together. You can see there's little holes and some sort of thread. Then it looks like on this one, instead of being sewn into the spine, they've been sewn together and then glued into the spine, which is this piece that goes to the front and the back that has then been glued to this leatherrete fabric that is the cover. That's the first kind. The next kind of sketchbook that you can buy is a ring bound sketchbook. This is a hardcover sketchbook with these kind of rings, the double rings. It opens like that, and at the back, it's got this thing here. You can also get this kind of thing, which is actually designed for people who are taking exams and they want to create flashcards. I think that's the purpose of it. That's why it's called a Kramer, but you can also use these for art as well, the ring opens so you can take things on and off. So that's the second kind. The third kind is a concertina. These are two different kinds of concertina books that I've bought. This one comes in a little box and it has a hard cover on each end, and then in the middle, it has one long strip of paper that's been folded back on itself, and you end up with a book that you can kind of flip open, and then you can also use the other side. I think they come in different lengths, different kinds of paper, and this one comes in a box. This one is the Hanamler zigzagbok which I really like this has an elastic closure and it has hardcover again on each end. They're very similar. It's got the folded paper folds in and out. This one has fewer pages altogether. I think the paper is thicker. It's more of a watercolor weight paper. I really like these Hanmla zigzag books because they're quite short. There's not too many pages. So they're quite good for a concise project. For example, this one, I've put artists on the front. I'm actually using it for a project that I'm doing about artists, which is the zoo near where I live. I've been taking this to the zoo and doing sketches and also printing out photos and collaging them in of animals that I've seen. Here I was looking for different colors that I could see. I quite like these for short little projects. So to summarize, there are three different kinds of sketchbooks that you can buy commercially. There are the one bound books. There are ring bound books, and then there are concert books. I'm sure there are also other kinds of sketchbooks that you could buy some weird and wonderful things, but these are the basic options when it comes to buying a sketchbook. In the following video, I will talk through how to customize these different kinds of commercially bought sketchbooks. 4. Altering Sewn-Bound Sketchbooks: This video, I'm going to show you how you can alter your bound sketchbooks. So these are the ones where the pages are sewn into the spine. And I'll just show you a few examples of things I've done in this sketchbook. So this is some paper that I made some cyanotype prints on, and I've cut it down to the right size and stuck it into my sketchbook as a sketchbook page. This here is a flap. This is the sketchbook page underneath, and this is a new piece of paper that I've added in, and I've made a flap here. This is a piece of scrapbook paper that I have turned into a sketchbook page. And this here is a different kind of paper that I've added in to make a new page here. This is another cyanotype piece, and I've added it in here, and this is quite interesting because it's a different shape. It's not the full size of the normal sketchbook page. So feel like that makes it a little bit interesting. This is a new piece of paper that I've added in. So this was the original sketchbook page and I've added in a new sketchbook page here. This is a different kind of paper that I've added in here to make a different kind of sketchbook page. This is another piece of paper that I've added in, and it's a different size to the normal sketchbook page, which adds a bit of interest. Here's another piece of extra paper that I've turned into a flat like added an extra page there. And here's the other part of the cyanotype paper, and I've turned that into an extra page here as well. And this is also a new page that I've created by sticking it into one of the sketchbook pages here. So there's two main methods that you can use for making these kinds of alterations. And you may have noticed. So this one here, is the hinge method. You can see that the original sketchbook page is this section here, and I've cut it down, and then I've stuck the new piece of paper on, so then you have the new paper on both sides. This is the other way of doing it, and this is by using a flap. So in this case, I've used washi tape on one side and masking tape on the other side, and that just creates a flap. And you can add an extra page in. This is done using the hinge method. So here is my hinge, and then I've stuck the scrapbook paper onto the hinge. And in this case, the paper was a little bit thinner, so I added a couple of strips across to give it a bit of extra strength. This is the flap method. So here is the flap that I've stuck down and I've folded this piece of paper over to create it and then stuck it down. This is the hinge method. So this here is the hinge, and then I've added this piece of paper onto it. And this is done using the flap method. So this is the flap here, and I've stuck it down onto the sketchbook page underneath. This is using the hinge method, so the hinge is here, and this is also a hinge method piece. This is done using the flap method, and this is also done using the flap method. And this is also, again, using the flap method. What I use to make a hinge is I use my ruler. And the easiest thing to do is to just use the width of the ruler and put one side up against the spine, and then you can tear off your sketchbook page, and you're left with this little piece here which you can use as a hinge. Now, you may want to make a hinge that is slightly smaller in size if you feel like this is too big. Although having the extra space means that you've got extra area to stick your new paper down to, which gives it a bit more security. But you may feel like this is quite big and it's interfering with your design that you've got going on, it's up to you really. But this is how you make your hinge. And then I'm going to use this piece. This is craft paper, and I have painted onto it, and then I've drawn over it with Posca pen. And so I'm going to add it in as a new page into my sketchbook. So I think I'm first of all, going to make a nice straight edge along here and make it sort of straight. And then I'm just going to tear along here. And then I can line this edge up. And there we go. I need to put glue all over this hinge here. So to do that, I'm going to put a piece of paper underneath to protect the sketchbook page underneath. And I'm just going to use a Pritt stick for this, a glue stick, but you could also use something like an acrylic binder. You could also use something like mud podge or you may have other glues. I think there are other kinds of glues that you could use for this. But I prefer using a glue stick because I feel like there's less chance of it buckling. I feel like with the liquid glues, there's always a bit of risk of it buckling the paper. And you want to make sure that the glue goes right up to the edge, which is why it's a good idea to have something underneath. Because as soon as you get air coming in between the pages in between the two pieces, then you risk it starting to come apart. Whereas, if it's completely covered, then you've got more chance that it will be a long term secure bond. So I'm just going to line that up with the spine there, and then I'm going to just kind of press it down. To help it stick. You can also use a bone folder for this to just give it a bit of extra help. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to put the page on top of it and I'm going to use a pencil to draw around. Okay, so I'm just going to trim off the excess here. There we go. We've used our hinge and we've created a new page using a different paper. This is one way you can do it. Now, if you want, you can add a bit of extra security on the back here by adding a piece of masking tape or washi tape. You could use any kind of tape that you like, really. I'm going to use masking tape. To do that, make sure that it's definitely long enough to cover the gap and then try and make sure you've got half of each side of the join under the masking tape, and then Press it down nice and firmly. And then you can trim off the excess. So you can also make hinges like this where it's not the same size as the actual sketchbook page. And to do that, you just take the piece of paper that you're interested in, create your hinge. So we'll do that in the same way. Which way round, should we have it? It looks kind of cool like that. So I want to glue this piece here, but I don't want the glue to go onto the other side of the page. So to do that, I'm going to just add a tiny pencil mark where the edges of the hinge are. And then using that pencil mark, I'm going to mark on the back. So I'm going to have a piece of paper underneath, and then I'm going to put this piece of paper and line it up with the two marks. And then I'm going to use my glue stick to cover this entire section here. Take the gluey pages out of the way. And now I'm going to use the two marks on the front to line it up with the edge of the hinge then line it up on the paper and then press it down. Again, you can use your bone folder to press it down nice and firmly. And then you have a new page that has a different size and shape to it, which I think is kind of one way of making your sketchbook much more interesting and fun. And although I haven't done this myself, you could get really creative with these hinges. So here I've just done a straight hinge, but you could imagine that you would cut a hinge out of a different shape. You could cut a curvy line. You could even have it coming out in the middle and then going down like that. And then that would add to the decorative elements on your page. But that's one way of adding in new pages into your bound sketchbook. Now the other way is to do a flap, and you can use these sketchbook pages that you've just torn out. You can add them back in. And you can use some washi tape for this. You could just use some masking tape if you prefer. I'm going to add some washi tape to this one. And I like to use these quite wide ones for this, but you could use other sizes, but I just feel like this makes the bond a little bit more secure. Now, I'm just turning the paper this way so I can see where the corners are so I can more easily line it up. And then I'm going to make sure I've got enough washy tape to cover the entire join, and then I'm going to carefully line up the pages. And make sure that there's about half and half of the paper underneath and the new paper, and then flatten it down. You can also use your bone folder to make sure that it's really nicely flattened down and may even get right into that crease there where the joiners then you can cut off the excess. And then you have a new page. So you could just leave it like this. But I like to add another piece on the inside because then it makes it very nice and secure. So I'm going to add a little bit of masking tape. You could add more washy tape. So again, I'm just going to make sure I've got a piece that's at least as long as the join. So I can overlap on each side, and then make sure it's about half and half. Press it down. Get the bone folder, get right into that crease there. Make sure it's really nicely flattened down, and then you can trim off the excess. That's one way of adding in a flap based piece. Now, another way of doing it is, for example, here you might want to add in a page that is it's not the full size of the page, and to do that, you want to make a fold. I'm going to fold this piece over this is actually a piece that I tie dyed, so it's got some folds in it already because I folded it up and then tie dyed it. I'm just going to use one of those lines. But if you don't have a line, you just fold a little piece over roughly the size that you want your flap to be. Make sure you sharpen the crease of the bone folder, and now I can stick it down and then this will become the page. I'm going to do the same process again, there's a bit of glue here, so you want to be a bit careful that you don't accidentally stick it. To any of your papers, so I'm going to fold it over and then put the flap over like that, and then put this other piece underneath, and this also has glue on it, so I fold that one over as well. And again, you want to get the glue all over this piece here. And don't be afraid to press down nice and hard. Because then you make sure you get a nice coverage and then remove these pieces out of the way. And then I'm going to line this up on the page. I want to kind of have it roughly central. So I think somewhere like that. And then again, press it down with the bone folder. And there you go. You have your extra flap. Now, you could leave it like that, but you can also add a bit of extra security with some washy tape or some masking tape. And one of the things I like to do is to use these thin washy tapes that you can get. And you can add a bit of a decorative element to your join using these washi tapes. So instead of putting it along the fold like that, you can put it along like this. I like to do a few I think they look a little bit like stitches, like sewn stitches, which I think looks kind of cool. So now I've got my extra page here. And it's joined on with this flap. You may also want to use this method to add in a page that covers the entire piece of the paper. For this, I'm going to use this tie dyed music paper. I think there's going to be enough space because the edge of the sketchbook page is here. So this is enough space to create a flap. But I'm going to actually fold the flap from this end, and I'm going to do that before I cut out the size of the page. I'm just going to choose about the right size for my flap. And then I'm just going to line up these edges here. And then use my bone folder to fold sharpen that crease. So, now that's going to be my flap. And that's going to go into the spine, sort of kind of decide which part I want. So I'm going to try and include as much of the music as I can then use the page in front as a guide, and I'm going to use my mechanical pencil to draw around. I'm gonna fold this little flap over and then use the edge of this page as a guide to cut the flap underneath. Okay. And then we're going to need to do the gluing again. So this is the part that I want to glue. And I'm going to use just making sure that there's no glue that's going to ruin my paper, have one piece of the paper underneath the flap and then one underneath the whole thing, and then Make sure that it's got plenty of glue all over it. Okay, so now we've got our gluey bit that we can line up, push it right into the spine, line the edges up. Oh, dear. I've got a little bit of glue there. I don't know how that happened. Maybe the paper that I was using to protect. It wasn't completely free of glue. I'm going to use the bone folder to smooth it out. I just used a baby wipe there to wipe off the excess glue and hopefully I got it all. Now we've got an extra page that's made from this lovely tie dyed music paper. There we go. There's the two different options. You have the hinge options, which is what we did here and this one. Then you've also got the different ways of making a flap. Can you do this one with the masking tape or you can fold over the paper and make a flap. And you can get really creative with this. You can do lots of different ways of making flaps and making the hinges and you can make them really decorative. You can make all different kinds of shapes of the pages in your sketchbook. I hope this has given you some really great inspiration and ideas for how to alter your own sketchbook. 5. Altering Ring-Bound Sketchbooks: In this video, I'm going to show you how you can adapt and alter your ring bound sketchbooks. The first thing that you can do, you can actually make it so that you can remove the pages. The benefit of doing this is that on this page, I've sewn parts of the page on my sewing machine and you can do this easier if you can take it out of the sketchbook because then you have a piece of paper. It's easier to put through the sewing machine. It's also easier to do other things with it when it's not attached to the rest of your sketchbook. The other thing you can do is you can change the order of the pages. So you can take them out and then you can go, actually I want the page here, and then you can put it back. You just put it back by sort of poking the little bits back into the ring binder. And I'm going to show you now how you can take the page out. I would usually fold it over like this, take some small scissors. These are ideal because they have a long small point to them. You find the page that you want to be able to remove and just push it slightly into the middle like that, and then you can fold it over so it's easier to access. And then it's in the middle of the ring here. And then you take your small scissors, snip in between the two rings like this. And now, it's a removable page. And I've found that these, especially with the thicker paper, I found that these do actually hold up pretty well. I don't find that they end up tearing out of the book or anything like that. I'll show you another thing that I've done in this sketchbook. You can see here I've got some pages where I've sewn onto the paper. I've also added in new pages. So this page is made from some scrapbook paper. This is another piece made from scrapbook paper. And this is actually made from a paper bag that I found. That's another thing you can do with these ring bound sketchbooks, is you can add in pages made from your own kinds of paper, and you can vary the weight of the paper. So this paper bag is quite thin. You could put some really thick pages in, you could put some thin pages in. You could have different colors. You could have pages made from whatever papers you are interested in, and you can add them all in, and then you can change the order as and when you like. Using this method. So I'm going to show you now how you can create your own page made from a template. So we've just taken this page out of the sketchbook, so we can use this as a template to create our own page. These are some scrapbook paper pads. These are ones that I actually designed myself using photographs that I've taken, but you could use any scrapbook paper pads. You could use paper that you've painted yourself, anything you like, really, but I'm going to use these to demonstrate. I'm going to find a page that I really like that I want to become part of my sketchbook. This one is all about kind of grungy things. That's quite a nice one. I wonder what's on the back. That would work quite well, I think. Now, I'm just going to check. Yeah, I can easily make a page that's this shape from this page here, so I'm just going to tear this page out of the pad. Conveniently, this paper is already square, so I can line up the corners, and then I don't have to cut those corners out. I don't really want to center anything in particular on here, but if you did have an image and you wanted to have it centered, then you might not want to line it up with the corners of the paper you have. But I'm going to do that in this case. I'm just going to use a pencil. So here I've got a mechanical pencil, which is quite nice because it's very fine and accurate. You could use anything that you have to hand, really. I'm just going to draw along the edge of the page. H And then I'm going to draw in the holes here. My mechanical pencils just run out to change and use this pen instead. And I'm going to draw in these circles here. Okay, so now I have my lines where I know I can cut to be the right size for the page in my sketchbook. I'm just going to use some scissors. If you have a paper gillotin, you could make the line really nice and sharp and straight using that. I don't have one, so I'm just going to use scissors. Oh. Okay, so now it's the same size and shape as the page. And now we need to cut out these holes. So to punch the holes, you have a couple of options. You could use a hole punch. So this is the traditional sort of hole punch that you'd find for stationery. So you may have one of these. You can also use this, which is one hole punch with an arm. If you don't have anything like this, you could just cut them out carefully using scissors, but it would be quite fiddly. So I'd suggest using a hole punch if you can. With this, it's fairly easy to line it up. You can see where the hole is and you can see where you want your hole to be, and then you can line it up. It hasn't clipped it way, so I'm going to have to take it off at the back, but there go. So there's your hole, and you can do that. All the way down. If you are wanting to use one of these hole punches, you take the bottom off and have it upside down. Put your paper in at an angle just so you're only using one of the holes. You want to make sure that the other hole isn't accidentally somehow over your paper, and then you can see where the hole is and line it up again with this hole here. And punch it out like that. If you want to use the scissors, then of course, we're also going to need to cut the little snip in towards the hole, like we did with the original page. So if you want to use scissors, then you first do that little snip and then carefully, get your scissors in there and cut out the circle. There we go. So that's going to take a lot longer. And out of the methods that I've got, this punch seems to be a bit blunt and every time I'm punching it, it's not fully and easily punching out the hole. So I'm going to use my old stationery hole punch here 'cause this seems to be the best method for me, but you pick whichever thing works for you. Conveniently, the holes along here are the same as a standard hole punch hole, so that works quite well. If you've got a different kind of sketchbook with a different kind of holes and rings, you may have to adapt things to fit the sketchbook that you have and the rings that you have. Okay, so now I've punched all of the holes, I need to make sure that they've all got these little cuts into them. So I'm gonna go down the line. Those ones I've already done. That one I haven't Then you have your sketchbook page, and now you can get your sketchbook and you can choose whereabouts you want your page to go, and then you can just gently press through the middle of the rings, pushing the paper down and into the middle of the rings. And there's your page. And so you can create a whole sketchbook with your own kinds of papers using this method, but making use of the cover and the rings and everything that you've got in your sketchbook. And the great thing with this method is that you can have things in a particular order and you don't have to stick with that order. You can change them at a later date. And you can have pages in there, and then you can decide, actually, I think I want to sew something on this with my sewing machine or I want it with me, but I don't want to take the whole sketchbook. I want to take it on a journey, for example, and do some sketching on it. You can take it out of your sketchbook, and then you can later put it back in. So I think this is a great way of adjusting your sketchbook to your own needs. And of course, this method also goes for these kinds of ring bound little sort of sketchbook things. So you can also snip these and then be able to pull them out. Although with this, you can open the ring up, so you can actually just take the pages out without having to snip them. This also applies to making your own pages for these. So you could take one of these out, and then you can trace round it and punch the whole and then create your own pages using your own papers. So this is another way of making a really cool little tiny portable sketchbook using your own pages, and then you can also change the order. So that also applies to these. 6. Altering Concertina Sketchbooks: In this video, I'm going to talk about altering commercially bought concertina sketchbooks. And to start off, I'm just going to show you what I've done with this one. So Concertina sketchbook folds out and it's kind of like one long page. And when I bought it, it was all this very creamy colored plain paper. And here I have added in a piece of paper that I actually tie dyed myself. And here is another join, and this is where I actually removed a couple of pages. Here I've added in some music paper. This drawing was done in the original sketchbook pages. Here I've added in some craft paper, and because the craft paper is a little bit thinner, I've actually strengthened it with this strip here. Here I've added in a page from sketchbook paper, and it's got some washi tape here. And then you can see on the other side, that's the back of the sketchbook paper. I've added in a strengthening strip there as well. Here, I've secured the craft paper with some washy tape and some masking tape. The music paper has been stuck down there. It's got a slightly ripped edge, and this one is secured with masking tape, washy tape, rather. Is the masking tape join with the pages that I removed. And this is the back of the tie dyed paper, and there's some washi tape and another piece of washi tape there. If this book was more flexible, this has got a spine, so I wasn't able to fit all of the new pages in and keep all of the original sketchbook pages in and allow the sketchbook to close properly. So I've actually got some more pieces here. That came from this book. And if you had a different kind of concertina book, for example, the zigzag books. They only have beginning cover and an end cover, and then they don't have a spine, so you can add in as many extra pages as you want without it actually affecting being able to close the book. But in this case, I've ended up with kind of an extra sketchbook, and I can later on, I can add a cover to this, and then it can be an extra sketchbook. So here I've added in some graph paper, and this graph paper is quite thin compared to the sketchbook pages. So I've strengthened it with these two strips, and I've joined it here with some masking tape, and here I've joined it with a piece of music paper and some double sided tape. Here's a piece of sketchbook paper that I have added in. We have some washy tape, and here's some washy tape as well, but they're going in a different direction. And this is another paper that I've added in. And here I've joined it with some masking tape. And then on the back, you can see that because it was a little bit thinner, I strengthened it with this piece here of this rainbow colored paper, and there's some washy tape there and the joins. This is the other side of the sketchbook paper. And here's another strip of music paper that I've used to join the two pages together with double sided tape. Here's another strip that's strengthening this squared paper that is a little bit thinner. So what are the reasons that you might want to alter your concertina sketchbook? Firstly, you may have pages in your sketchbook that you don't want in there and you want to remove them. It may be that you've done something on them that you don't like, and you want to take them out and throw them away. You may also have done something that you really do like and you want to remove the pages so that you can frame those pages as a piece of work on paper. You may also decide that you want to change the order of the pages. So you may want to take some pages out of one part of the sketchbook and put them in a different part of the sketchbook. And the other example is that you might want to add new pages in. In this piece, as you've seen, I've added in pages made from different kinds of paper, but you may just want to add extra pages from a similar kind of paper just so that it's got more pages in it. But I think it's quite fun to be able to make your sketchbook more exciting and more colorful and have lots of different kinds of textures and colors and things. So that's what I've done with mine, but you may want to add extra pages in. So whichever method you choose, you're going to have to cut some of the pages in your sketchbook. But you have a couple of options for this. First of all, you can use a pair of scissors and just cut along the fold line. So in this example here, if you wanted to remove this page, you can use scissors and you can cut along the fold line here. You could also use a craft knife with a cutting mat and a ruler. And in that situation, you would take your ruler, line it up carefully with the fold on your paper. And then use your craft knife to cut along the line. Okay, the next thing to be aware of when you're altering your concertina book and you're joining pages together is there are two kinds of folds in a concertina book. Concertina goes up and down up and down, up and down. So the top folds along here, I'm going to call mountain folds, and I'm taking this naming from Origami. The bottom folds, which are the ones at the bottom here are called Valley folds. Again, this comes from origami. And what you have to be aware of when you're deciding how to add pages in and move pages around is you've got to take note of whether you're talking about a mountain fold or a valley fold because you can't join a mountain fold to a valley fold without it changing the structure of your concertina book. So the easiest thing to do is to change your pages in pairs. So by that, I mean, if you want to take a page out or add a page in you need to do it two at a time or four at a time or six at a time. For example, if I wanted to take out this page and this page and join this spotty fold here to this fold here with the gold on, I would have to take both of these pages out so that I could join them together, and the book could carry on as normal. If you just want to take one page out, then when you add this spotty fold to this value fold, for example, you would have to re train all of the folds to go the opposite way. You can do this with a bone folder. I'll demonstrate how to retrain the pages with this section of pages that I actually removed from this sketchbook. I think I can use this for something else, but I didn't want it in my sketchbook anymore, so I removed these pages, and I can demonstrate here. So at the moment, we've got two valley folds and one mountain fold. If I needed to attach this edge here, to a valley fold. I can retrain the other folds. And how you do that is you just fold it the other way. So at the moment this is a valley fold, I'm going to make it into a mountain fold by folding it over, and then you take your bone folder and smooth it down. And it may resist a little bit because it's been so used to being a valley fold, and now I'm asking it to do the opposite, so it may find it a little bit difficult. You may have to really push down with the bone folder, and now I'm going to turn this mountain fold into a valley fold by folding it the other way. Again, I'm going to use the bone folder here. And then this valley fold now wants to become a mountain fold, so I'm going to fold it that way. Okay, so I've retrained my pages, and now I can attach this one here to a valley fold. So it is possible to change how your book folds. But depending on how many pages you've got in your book that you'd have to do that with, you may prefer not to. And in which case, it's probably easier just to do everything in pairs. So you do two pages at a time, and that means that you don't have to change any of the folds. Okay, so I'm now going to talk about the ways that you can join your pages back together. And the first option is to use tape, and there are a few different kinds of tape that you can use, and I showed you a few in my book. The first type is masking tape, and this is just ordinary masking tape, and it's quite inexpensive, so this is a good option. Also, with the color of my pages in this book because they're slightly off white, creamy color, it actually goes quite well with the masking tape, the masking tape is quite subtle, it doesn't show up very well. The other option, which I haven't actually used in the demonstration book that I showed you is clear sticky tape, and you can get shiny, kind of glossy sticky tape, the normal kind of tape. And you can also get this kind of mat tape, which is also known as invisible tape. And this is something that you could use because you can see everything that's underneath. For example, if I wanted to cut and join one of the pages on this page, I wouldn't want to cover up any of my painting, my drawing here. So I might want to use this clear invisible tape so that I can still see everything underneath without it being obscured by the tape. So that's another option. You also have these decorative washy tapes, and these are quite nice for adding a decorative element into your book. So I've used masking tape quite a lot in my example. Another thing you can use is double sided tape with paper piece that you use as a kind of cover. So I'll demonstrate that for you in a moment. And it's a good idea to use it in combination with a glue stick. And so the other option is you can just use a glue stick on its own. And in that case, what you can do is you can create a flat. So you can see on this piece here. The fold is actually here, but the edge of the scrapbook paper is here, and that's because I've created an extra little flap out of the sketchbook paper, that means that I've been able to use the glue stick to glue this flap to the sketchbook page. And you can just do that on its own. That's totally fine, but what I like to do, and I think I might have done it in this example, yes. On the other side, I've also used masking tape, which kind of just adds a little bit of extra strength to this fold here and it just protects the flap a little bit. So there are two different options for joining your paper together. I've just talked about you can create a flap. That's one option. The other option is that you can just but the two pages up next to each other and add some tape. And you may want to use this if you have something on both pages. Like I've got a drawing here and a drawing here. And so I don't want to add anything over there, like a flap of paper that's gonna cover up what I've got on the page. And I didn't have an extra piece of paper here to cut a flap from because these are two pages that already existed in my sketchbook. So I was only left with the option of cutting along the fold and then joining the two edges up together. That's totally fine, and it just means that this fold is maybe a slightly more vulnerable, but I've added masking tape on both sides. So I think it will hold up pretty well. But using these pages that I've removed from my sketchbook, I can demonstrate what I mean by the two different ways of doing it. I'm going to first demonstrate cutting it with scissors. So I'm going to cut along the fold with the scissors. And this is fairly straightforward. I just use the folded line as your guide, and just cut along it. And the scissors. You can also use your craft knife. So in this case, I'm going to use my ruler, line it up with the fold line. Use my craft knife to to cut the page along the fold there. Okay, so here I am changing the order of the pages. So I'm going to swap this one over with this one, and I'm going to show you the butting up the pages method here because I've got paint on both pieces of paper. I might not want to cover any of this up. So I'm going to just make it so that they match up and do this all on a flat surface. And because I've got paint on the pages, I'm going to use this clear sticky tape. And what I do is just make sure that it's definitely going to cover the fold. And now I'm just going to focus on covering one side and try and get it straight and roughly so that half of the tape is going to be on this side of the fold. There I go. Now I'm going to carefully make sure that they are aligned. And then I'm going to smooth the whole thing down. You need to make sure that it's really well stuck down when you're doing this method. Okay. Now, I'm going to trim off the excess tape. And then I'm going to add another piece of tape on the back. And this time it doesn't need to be clear because I don't have anything here yet. So I'm going to use some decorative washi tape. I like adding some fun stuff into my sketchbooks. Makes me happy. This is a new washi tape that I just got, and I really love these flowers. Okay, so again, cut it so that you know it's definitely gonna cover the whole of the fold, and this one is much easier because you don't have to also align the pages at the same time. Pops. Just try and make sure that it covers roughly half of the fold. It more difficult to see here. There we go. And then smooth it all down. You can see that this piece of paper has already got a flap on it, and that's from the original sketchbook. So they actually make the sketchbooks from several pieces of paper that they join together in the first place, which is interesting. So now we're going to have to retrain this fold. So this is a mountain fold here. So this needs to be a valley fold, so it needs to fold in. So we need to fold it in and then use our bone folder smooth along the crease. And it's going to be a little bit thicker now because it's got the paper, but it's also got the tape two layers of tape, so it may take a little bit of doing to get it to move the way that you want it to. So there we go. We've changed the order. So now this page is next to this one, and we've joined it using two different methods. Now, the second way of doing it is to use a flap. And to demonstrate this, I think it's easiest if I make a new page to add in because we don't have any flap on this page. And I could create a flap here, but then we'd be left with a partial page which I don't really want to have that in this case. So what I'm going to do is create a new page so I can show you how to do that at the same time. So here are some different kinds of paper that we might want to use to make a new page. So you've probably got a whole stash of different kinds of paper. And if you haven't these are the kinds of things that you can either find from art shops, but you can also upcycle old things. So this is an old piece of music paper that would otherwise just be going in the paper recycling bin. This is a piece of wrapping paper that I have rescued, and that's made it into my sketchbook. This is something that I think I bought from an art shop, but this is from an old exercise book that some of the pages were used. I think it was my brother's physics book from school. So I have taken out some of the pages that were unused in the book, and I've sort of rescued this again from being recycled. This is another piece. I think this came with some flowers, and this was sort of like the paper wrapping that sometimes you get on a bunch of flowers. So this is also kind of recycled option. This piece is one that I actually painted myself. And it's a textured paper that you may be able to see. It's got some little fibers that are kind of loose in there. I think I used alcohol inks to paint this paper. And now I've been able to use it in my paper craft projects. And then, of course, you can buy scrapbook paper. So this is some scrapbook paper that I've bought, and it comes in a pad of loose sheets. I like using this sometimes, although I do prefer to use my own painted pages because I feel like then it's my own artwork. But if you do use a scrapbook paper, you can also add to it and paint over it and make it your own. So which 1:00 A.M. I going to choose? That's the question. So, in this case, I'm going to use a piece of old music. Paper. And because of the size of the pages in my sketchbook and the size of this piece of music paper, it looks like I can actually fit two pages plus a little flap. So I think that's what I'm gonna do. First of all, I'm going to measure the height of the page. So I'm going to line the corners up here, and then I'm going to use pencil to mark the top of the page there. And then I can do it on the other side as well, Now, I don't have a paper trimmer or a gillotine, but if you do have one, this would make this process a lot easier because then you could put this in and line the two pieces up and cut a straight line really easily. I'm just going to use this ruler here, line the two marks up and mark with the pencil. And then I can cut this either with my craft knife and my cutting mat or with my scissors. I'm just gonna cut it with my scissors. Okay, so now we know that this is the right height, we can now decide where we want the page to be and where we want the flaps to be. So I think there's space for two quite small flaps, one on either side. I think that's what I'm going to go for. And in that case, the easy thing to do is to actually just fold the paper in half to make the middle fold. It always helps to use your bone folder to kind of, like, sharpen the creases when you're working with these sorts of folds. So there's our middle fold. And now we can mark where the edge of the page is going to go. Then on the inside. So this is a valley fold, so I'm going to make these flaps into mountain folds. So I'm just gonna fold it over and fold along the line, which can be a little bit fiddly when you've got such a small piece of paper that you're working with. But just sort of do it little bit by little bit. And then you can use your bone folder here to fold that all along. And then the same on the other side. So this mountain fold here can go with this mountain fold here, and I don't want to cover up any of my drawing here. It's plain on the other side, so I'm going to stick the flap to this side, and it'll go like that. So I'm going to be sticking it to the back here. You can just use a glutick for this. This is perfectly fine, and actually this is my preferred kind of glue. You could use something else like could use a Mg podge or I've also got this. It's called acrylic binder. And these are more liquidy kinds of glues. I know there are other kinds of glues out there, lots of different glues, like tacky glue is another one that I've heard of. The thing I find with liquid glue is that it does sometimes make the paper buckle a little bit. Whereas I find glutick to be it doesn't make the paper buckle. It can be a little bit less of a secure bond between the two papers. And so to make sure that this bonds really well, the trick is that you make sure that you cover the entire piece of paper that is going to be adhered to the other piece of paper. If there's any little pockets of air under there, that's where you can get it to start to come apart. And then as soon as you've got it coming apart, it can open up and then, you know, it can completely come apart. So I find that glueticks can be really effective if you use them properly. So to do this, I like to use a piece of paper underneath because I want to be able to completely cover all of the paper, and I don't want to worry about going over the edge because I want the glue to go all the way up to the edges. But what I don't want is for the glue to get onto this piece of paper, which is going to be my sketchbook page. So you can use another scrap piece. Like, I have this piece here, which we cut off the page to start with, and you can use that to line it up against where you're going to add glue. And so then you can put glue all over this whole area over the edges onto these other pieces of paper. And that means that you've definitely got glue everywhere and you don't have any little air pockets. And I find that you need to press down quite hard with your glue stick. So don't be afraid and don't be afraid to kind of go back over areas as well, you really want to make sure you've got it completely covered. Take that away. This has got glue on it now, and so has this, so we don't want to accidentally stick that to anything. So just sort of take it out of the way. So now I'm going to line this up carefully with the edge there. I kind of press it down. But I'm also going to before the glue completely sets, I'm going to just check that the fold is in the right place. Seems fine. So I'm going to press it down even more with the bone folder. You really want to make sure that that glue is very well adhered. Okay? So there's the little flap, and you can leave it like that. That will probably hold pretty well. But if you want to, you can also add some tape to kind of strengthen it just in case the glue does start to come apart. And you could add this on both sides. P that's most vulnerable to coming apart is actually the part where the fold is because this is the bit that's going to be moving a lot. And so it's a little bit vulnerable there on the edge. If any air gets in, it might start to come apart. So in this case, I don't want to cover up any of my drawing, but I can use some clear tape to go over here. I'm going to again, roughly cut enough, line it up, and then stick it down. And trim off the edges. And I could add another piece of decorative tape here, but I've already got some washi tape there. So I think, in this case, I'm going to add some masking tape. Okay, now I'm going to retrain the fold, so it goes like that. And then this Okay. And now we can add this last page here with this flap. And in this case, I'm going to show you the technique where you can use a strip of paper with double sided tape to make the join. I like to keep scraps of paper, so little off cuts and things because I find that they come in handy for this kind of situation where you want just a small piece, but you don't necessarily want to cut up a whole sheet of paper for something like this. So I've got this, which is my small paper scraps, and lots of these are probably too small. Here, look, I have this where I added this page here, I obviously had to trim off some parts of the page. And now I have this piece, which I could use. Let's see what else is in here. There's some music paper, but because we're already using music paper, I won't use that. This is probably a bit too small, and this is quite nice, but this is quite thin. This is deli paper that I've printed on. A lot of the paper scraps in here are really small. But I find them useful for when I'm doing collage. So I like to have this to sort of rummage through. So, something like that would be nice, but I don't think it's no, it doesn't quite fit. It's not tall enough. And so that's my small paper scraps. This is my large paper scraps. Let's see what's in here. Well, this would be quite nice, wouldn't it? And it's about the right size. Yeah, that's great. Let's see what else is in here. I kind of have these goodies in here. If you're doing several pages at a time, you can maybe use the off cuts from one kind of paper to use as a join for another kind of paper and vice versa. Here's a piece of scrapbook paper that I could possibly use. This is from a magazine, so this is another thing you could use a old magazine pages. And this is a piece of paper that I've painted on, and it is tall enough, so that might be quite interesting. I could use that. And this is some music paper that I have tie dyed again. That would actually work quite well. So I'll keep that out. These all look like they're a bit too small. So, but I think we've got some options there. So if you're a beginner at paper crafts and you don't already keep hold of your scraps, then I would urge you to start up. It doesn't have to be a very big folder, a little folder like these, just to keep hold of little bits because they come in handy for different projects. And my first sewing teacher told me, like, Never throw anything away. You have to be a little bit careful because this can become a bit of an obsession and a bit of a boarding problem. So, yeah, you know, there are times when you just think that's way too small or that I don't actually like that. I'm not going to hold on to it, but nice little bits of paper. It is handy to have them all in one place, so you can do things like this with it. What would go well with this painting? I'm actually not bothered about covering up this edge here. I'm not going to use this one because it's quite thin and it's a little bit translucent. And so I feel like the double sided tape will shine through and be able to see through it, so I'm not going to use that one. Don't think this purple goes particularly well with the colors that we've already got here. I might like to use that on the other side. I think that would look quite nice on that side, so I'll use that for the back. And let's see. I think because we've already got music here, I think this would be a little bit too much, so I'm not going to use that one, but I am quite interested by the painted paper. So maybe. Although I do already have some paint here, the other option is to use this sketchbook paper, which is quite thick. I'm wondering whether I might actually cut a piece off this gold paper or sort of copper color. I think that might go quite nicely. So it doesn't come from my scraps, but that's okay. Let's cut a piece that's the right size, and I can actually use this as a kind of guide because it's about the right size already. Cut this. I'm just holding this other piece up as a kind of template. So we can just use this on its own. We don't need to use glue. But because I'm a bit obsessive about trying to make sure everything is nice and strong, I am actually going to glue the flap down first, and then I'm going to cover it with these. I'm actually going to use the back of one of the pieces because it doesn't actually matter if it has glue on it because it's going to be stuck down anyway. And then I'm gonna again cover the flap glue. I guess the only thing with this is that it does make the join fairly permanent. So then if you do later want to move the page again, you'll have to cut through all of these joining methods that you've used. But that is a problem for future, and hopefully you won't ever need to do it. So here we go. Now, I'm going to do the back first because this has already got glue on it. So here we go. Here is the flap, and here is the piece that we want to cover it with. So I'm going to use this double sided tape, and I'm going to put the tape on the extra piece of paper rather than onto the sketchbook page. So again, I'm gonna cut it to be the right size. It doesn't matter about the ends because we're gonna trim those off in the end anyway. And then I do another piece. Okay, so then you peel off the backing paper. And if you don't have any nails, this is always a bit tricky. So I want one side of the tape to go over one side of the join and the other side to go over the other side. And I don't want there to be a little bit that goes over the fold. So I can actually see where the edge of the piece of paper is underneath there, and I'm going to make sure that I skip that and just put the paper over the join. If you were not using a flap and you were just using the butting up method, but just using the piece of paper with a double sided tape, you want to make sure that one strip of tape was on one side of the fold and the other strip was on the other side. Okay, and now I'm going to trim off the excess. And then we're going to do the same with this piece here. And actually, I'm looking at this sort of torn edge here, and I'm thinking it might be nicer to have a torn edge. So, you can actually use a ruler to do this. It's easier if you have a bit more space to play with, but you can put your piece of paper down with your ruler. I just started the tear there to make it easier to lift up, and then I'm going to put the ruler down and tear. Quite like that. You get like a nice soft edge. You could just do this by hand as well. Look, you don't need to use the ruler. I haven't left myself very much room in the middle there to go over the fold. So that's because I decided at the last minute that I wanted to have the torn edges. I think it would be probably more sensible to leave a little bit of bigger piece because now I'm gonna have to be quite careful here. Okay. That lump there, I think is a bit of paint on the page underneath. Okay, so now we have this on both sides and we want to retrain the fold again. So there we go. Now, it's starting to become a whole new sketchbook, in fact, but you could do this with the pages that are already in your sketchbook, and you can keep altering your sketchbook in this way. You may have one that you've already got things in and you want to add new pages in and bring it back to life and make it a bit more fun and a bit more interesting. And this is a great way of doing that. So the last thing that I wanted to show you was how to strengthen pages that are a little bit thinner than the pages that come with the sketchbook. So this music paper here is a little bit thinner, and it's probably fine, actually, to just leave it like this. But you may have pages that are quite a bit thinner and you may want to make sure that they're nicely kind of supported. So, for example, here, I've added two strips across to give it a bit of extra strength, and I've added one strip on the back, and that gives double weight strength to the page. Pretty much all the way across it, but you still get to see the paper that's underneath. So you can do this in the same way basically that we added the extra strips down the side. So find a piece that you want to add to go across. So again, you can use your paper scraps or you can cut something from an existing piece. We could do that, although that doesn't go all the way across. You could add a piece of scrapbook paper. Now, because in this case, this paper isn't too thin. I think it would be interesting to add something like this. This is printed deli paper, but you could also use tissue paper, paper that is not doesn't have to be very thick in itself, because just adding that extra little bit of weight will just add a little bit of support. And so I think this is quite an interesting thing to do because it's partly translucent, so you can see what's underneath. This is another piece, and this is more obviously translucent and can see what's happening underneath. So, yeah, I think I'm going to add this, and now I'm going to just tear off the very edges where the paint stops because I don't want this. I don't know if you can see, but it's kind of like a crinkle cut edge, which I don't really want in my sketchbook. I don't think it will fit. I do I want it going over there because then it will overlap with this gold piece, or maybe I want it on the other side. I think that would look nice, 'cause it goes quite well with this purple color. So I'm just going to use glue stick to stick it down, get glue all over it. I'm going to put it in the middle here. I think that's really nice because you can still see the music paper a little bit underneath, but just gives it something a little bit extra, and I think it gives a little bit of extra strength to the paper. Another thing you could do is you can strengthen it with tape. You could use any of the tapes that we've mentioned so far. You could use some clear tape. You could also use some decorative tape or you could use some masking tape, and that will also add a little bit of extra strength to the page. I'm going to go look in my washy tape stash. I may have a slight problem. These are all my washi tapes. There's some really nice ones in here, and I think they could add something really interesting to the page. And I think because I have the paper on this side, I'm going to see if I can find something that will go on this side. So I want it to kind of feel like it links these two areas of red and pink and orangy sort of colors. So there's this one, which is kind of a neon, which may be a bit too much. This one looks quite nice. I could use that. This one's quite sweet. It's got like cats and dogs, and it's a kind of peachy color, so that might go quite well. I also really like these thin washy tapes that are just a single color because they may be a bit boring on their own, but when you double them up, they can actually look quite effective. You can really make them your own. They're not somebody else's artwork. They are just plain colors. So you can use them in quite a creative way. Okay, so I'm going to try a piece of this. I actually feel like that is maybe a little bit too crazy. I feel like it's just gonna not fit with the rest. So I'm not gonna use that one. Let's see what this one might look like. Yeah, I'm not sure about this one either. The other kind of washy tape that I really like are black and white ones. So we could try this black and white, spotty one. That might work quite well. Oh. Well, I actually think this black and white striped one might work quite well because the lines of the music go this way, and this adds a bit of an extra dimension. So I'm again going to kind of tear a piece that I think is roughly the right size decide where I want it to go. I want it right I don't think I want it right at the bottom. I think I'm going to have it here. That looks quite cool. And then I'm going to have a yellow and an orange stripe at the top. A lot of these things are kind of trial and error. Try things out, see whether you like them. And it's great if you can try things without actually having to commit to it. Like, hold things up, see what you think before you actually stick anything down. Now, this page feels a lot stronger because it's got a piece of paper in the middle and it's got the tape at the edges. You don't have to cover the whole thing to make it stronger. Adding a little bit of support that goes across the page will really help. So I'm going to have to retrain the fold again because now it's got the paper in the middle and it's got these tapes. So here we go. This is our lesson on how to adapt and alter your concertina book. In this case, I've ended up with three books. Of course, I can add these pages to this paper here using the methods that I've talked about, and this book could go on and on and on. And, of course, if you had a different kind of concertina book, this could all be the same book and you could just keep adding more pages in and it could just keep growing. But I hope this has given you some great ideas for ways of making your concertina book much more interesting and making it much more your style, making it much more of a fun thing to work in when you come to doing your drawings or your paper crafts, your collage, whatever it is that you like to do in your sketchbook. 7. Course Recap: That brings this course to a close. I hope you've enjoyed hacking your sketchbook by making alterations to the pages. I would love to see your altered sketchbooks, so please do share them in the class project section. To recap, we have learned how to identify the different kinds of commercially available sketchbooks, one bound sketchbooks, ring bound sketchbooks, and concertina. We have learnt how to alter our one bound sketchbooks with the hinge method and the flat method. We have learnt how to alter ring bound sketchbook by removing the pages and reinserting them to change the page order. We've also learnt how to make new pages for our ringbund sketchbook by using a template and a hole punch. We've learned how to alter our concertina sketchbooks by removing the pages and rejoining them, adding new pages in and how to identify and change mountain folds and valley folds. I truly hope this course has given you plenty of inspiration for making your own sketchbooks much more fun and exciting to work in if you want to know more about me, you can find me at rosewildsmith.net. Thanks for joining me on this sketchbook hacking adventure. Bye for now.