Layers of Inspiration: Craft Your Own Mixed Media Collage Sketchbook

1. Introduction: Do you struggle with approaching the blank sketchbook page? Have you ever wanted to learn how to incorporate collage into your sketchbook practice? Or are you curious about different mixed media approaches and techniques? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this is the class for you. Hi, I'm Elizabeth and welcome to my class. Layers of Inspiration to craft your own mixed media collage sketchbook. Although I'm a professionally trained artist and art educator, much of what I currently use in my artistic practice has come from my own desire to continue to learn and experiment and explore and seek out new ways to challenge myself artistically, creatively. And constant drive to find new ways to inspire that artistic energy that comes when you're in that moment of creating. In 2020, I began teaching for skill share teaching classes that explore a wide range of media techniques and art making approaches. As I share my creative journey and artistic process with my students, I love all things art. And any chance that I have to combine media and techniques, I take it. Collage gives me a new approach to my schedule practice where I get to incorporate it in ways where it is inspiration and a jumping off point for the mixed media techniques that I then go into my practice with. It's like if I were to like scribble on the page or apply a splash of color, or had when I was starting a new sketch. But in this case, that, oops, is a really beautiful and inspiring piece of collage material. It might be a torn magazine page, it might be some decorative paper that I've created. But that collage piece then takes away my fear of messing up or not knowing where to start. Because the collage piece is the start, it's already there. And I can then use that to inspire pieces that may have never come alive in my art practice if that little piece of paper hadn't been there to spark curiosity and excitement and really got me going. In this class, we'll be creating a small handmade sketchbook that will be made from pages that we collage on. Then we're going to cut that up to create the sketchbook. And then go back into those pages and discover the wonder of collage inspiration and mixed media techniques and approaches. If you're new to create decorative papers, I have several other classes that explore this topic using watercolor ink, acrylic paint, and a wide range of ways to apply those materials to your paper. If you're interested in checking those out, you can find those classes on my skill share profile page. This class is intended for creatives of all skill levels, as it's a simple way to create a personalized handmade sketchbook. And then start using the fun of collage and mixed media techniques to really expand your creativity. Explore your curiosity and help to get you creating faster. By the end of this class, you will have a beautiful, inspiring collage sketchbook that will allow you to approach a mixed media sketchbook in a relaxed way. I hope you'll join me in this fun class as we combine collage sketch bookmaking and mixed media techniques. Heading over to the next lesson to learn more about our class project. I'll see you there. 2. Class Project: Thanks for joining me for our class project. We will be collaging on large sheets of paper, cutting those down, and creating the pages that we will then assemble into a handmade sketchbook. Our sketch books are going to be 4a26 inches in size and pretty thick. This is an artistic practice that I learned from artist Henrik Dresser and it was so inspiring to learn how he filled his pages with inspiring bits of paper, both from materials as well as his old sketches and artworks. And it's a really great way to take earlier art experimentation and repurpose it so that it becomes a meaningful part of your artistic practice yet again. And isn't just something that you set aside or throw away. And it's really fun to see those old sketches and artworks turn into new, interesting artistic pieces. After we collage our pages and assemble our sketchbook, we will then work back into our collage spreads using those as inspiration as we apply a variety of mixed media techniques that I will demonstrate in our later lessons. Along with the video demonstration, you can find directions how to create your handmade sketchbook in the projects and resources section of our class. If you are watching this class on the silter app, be sure to pop on over to the schools website to access those resources. They are listed beneath the class project description on the website. It's always so fun to see how everyone approaches a class project, especially one like this. I really hope you'll consider sharing your sketchbook and some of your sketchbook mixed media collage spreads in the class project section. You can upload those to the student gallery and share your thoughts on what kinds of papers you use, the techniques that you most enjoyed, and ideas you have for future mixed media collage, sketchbooks. Let's send it over to the next lesson to talk more about what materials we'll be using in this class. I'll see you there. 3. Materials: Now let's talk about art supplies. There's no limit to what type of decorative paper you might want to incorporate into your sketchbook pages. I use a combination of decorative papers that I have created with watercolor techniques, inking different exercises that I did as part of other classes and workshops that I have taken and taught, as well as some magazine pages that I've collected over the years. As far as magazines go, I look for inspiring colors and patterns and implied textures and shapes. Anything that makes me go, ooh, that has possibility. So if you don't have a lot of collage materials on hand, grab some free magazines from your library or we ask a friend if they're done with their magazines or go into your own magazine stash and start tearing out some interesting pages. As well as some sketches or doodles or abandoned artworks that were wonderful in the moment, but I don't really serve a purpose anymore. Those when torn up and cut up, can make really wonderful additions to your mixed media collage sketchbook. I've included a list of necessary and optional art supplies in the class description. We are going to be starting with large sheets of paper, so I'm going to be using a mix of my large Canson mixed media paper. This is 18 24 ", which is about the size that you're going to want to have initially. This is 160 gram paper, 98 pounds. It works really great because it isn't too thick, but it can also handle a lot of media. I'm going to be using a couple sheets of this. I also really love working with pastel paper for this project. I couldn't find pastel paper larger than nine x 12 " that I could get when I wanted to work on this project. And my original book used up most of it. I have a couple sheets left that I'm going to work with. I'm also going to test out how my black mixed media paper works from Strathmore. This is 184 pounds. It's 300 GM's. It's a little too thick. But because I do need to be able to fold it at some point and it might crack, I'm not sure, but I'm going to test this as well. I also picked up a pad of artist loft toned paper. This is just for drawing, so we're going to see how it handles its medium weight. It's actually pretty thin and very smooth. This is another experiment. I wanted the tone paper because I wanted to have that variation from page spread to page spread in my sketchbook. It'll be an experiment, but this isn't 18 x 24 ". What I'm going to do is I'm going to tear out four sheets of the paper, and then I'm going to assemble a larger sheet. If you don't have 18 x 24 inch paper, this is what I recommend you do. I'll show you more as we get started in the project about how to do this in a way that makes sense. This way, I can put together four sheets of paper to mimic an 18 by 24 inch sheet of paper. If you only have nine by 12, that will work great. We're not really going to be doing much measuring, actually, we're not really going to be measuring at all. As long as you can get papers together to give you a nice big surface area for each of our initial collage spreads, you'll be in great shape because we're working mixed media. You want to think about paper that can fold easily. We are going to be folding our cutdown pages. You're going to want to be thinking about color. Perhaps if you have some toned paper, some black paper that isn't too thick. This pad had, I think, four different colors in it initially. This pastel paper worked great for my initial sketchbook. You can see when I open it up, I have that toned paper behind the collage, which was really a fun element to work with. In some cases I ended up using it, in some cases I ended up covering it up. Completely white paper will also be fine. Think about what papers you have on hand, what papers can handle, collage and ink. Maybe you're going to want to paint back into your pages. You're going to want to have a collection of decorative papers. I like to keep mine in boxes. This is a little chaotic because I've been collaging a lot lately. I've got various magazine images that I've pulled out. I like the old graphics from the cookbooks that I've collected and gutted different handmade sketchbooks. The color pages, I've got scraps from other collages that I've worked on. I've got some of my texture papers. This was originally part of my mark making class where I was experimenting with what marks could be made with kitchen supplies. I have begun repurposing those practice sheets. Lots of other fun stuff. There's more of that, some artworks that I decided to abandon. But rather than throw them out, I like to keep them for future inspiration and repurposing. There's a, there's really no limit to what kind of papers you might want to have on hand if you only have collage. Sorry. If you only have magazine images, that's fine. But you might have some other doodles or scraps of paper lead through that. Maybe this could be considered something I'd throw away, but who knows? That little block can turn into something amazing. A lot of decorative paper, collage materials, not too thick, I wouldn't go any. This paper, this is pretty thick watercolor paper. It might need to bend if it's on the crease of my sketchbook. You might want to think about going with your thinner collage materials, but you're going to want a lot of glue sticks. We're going to be gluing down a ton of collage materials before we start assembling our sketchbook, I recommend glue sticks of any variety that you have. The I'm going to be tearing my collage materials, but you may want to cut yours instead. You probably want to have a pair of scissors. And then we're going to be working back into our sketch books with various mixed media materials. I like having colored pencils. I love paint pens. I'm really obsessed with brush pens these days. So I've got a whole pack of brush pens. This is my Go tube carrying kit. This has my fountain pen. This has some ballpoint pens that have a bunch of different colors in it. A couple of different colored fountain pens. Sharpies, I love a good Sharpie, so I've got some metallics and some blacks. Any of those supplies are great. We're going to need a surface to cut our large sheets on. I would either use a scrap of cardboard. I love to save the backs of my sketch books for that. This canson paper book is almost empty. This would make a really great cutting surface for me if you have a large cutting mat that is also great, but cardboard works wonderful to cut our paper down from the 18 by 20 to the nine by six in sheets that we're going to start with for assembling our sketch book. You're going to want to have a heavy duty Exacto knife or a box cutter. I don't have a box cutter in the art studio, so I've been using my Exacto knife and that has been working great. You're also going to want to have a heavy duty long ruler. Here's my Exacto knife. I've got my metal ruler, which works really great for cutting the papers down. We're going to do a lot of gluing, so you might want to have a damp cloth because your fingers are going to get a little sticky in the construction stage of this. A damp cloth works great because I can rinse my white, my fingers off and then set it aside really having a wet section and a dry section because we're not doing a ton of ton atomic gluing, But we're doing enough where we want to be able to keep our fingers from getting too gluey. You could also use graphite pencils. You could think of different ways to apply inks. I have a bunch of different dip pen inks and these are some FW Pearlescent, these are my acrylic inks. And then I also have some more water color based inks. Liquid water color pencils will be really fun for this. If you're going to have inks on hand, you're probably going to want to have a dip pen or a paint brush or a skewer. The great thing about these sketchbooks is that they're really wonderful for creating. On the go, I take this sketchbook with me all over the place. It's so small t heavy because this one's pretty thick. But I can easily open up a spread and start working on it if I'm waiting for my kids or if I'm at an appointment, or if I'm sitting in the car waiting for the next thing. I did a lot of these pages while we were traveling throughout Michigan this summer for family vacations and to go visit my parents in the northern part of Michigan. I would just grab the sketchbook and grab a small bag of whatever, a couple brush pens, a couple paint pens and fountain pens, sharpies, and then I was ready to create. Anywhere you could also think about that as your working on your sketchbook, where might you want to take this? This does not have to only live at your art table or in your home. I've probably traveled and art in this more outside my home than I have inside my home. It really anything goes as far as the mixed media part. So take some time to gather up your art materials and I will see you over. In the next lesson, we'll begin collaging into our large sheets of paper. See you there. 4. Collaging Pages: Let's start collaging into our large sheets of paper as we begin putting inspiration into what will become our handmade mixed media collage, Sketchbooks. Collage is a technique where you've cut up or tear materials and papers and then glue them down to a surface. For this class, I will be using a mix of old sketches, doodles, artworks, decorative papers that I've created ahead of time, as well as scraps from other collage projects and magazine images that I have torn out and collected over the years. The key is really to not think about where it goes, because you want it to be as random as possible, but there's no reason you can't collect and gather up collage materials that you find exciting. Because after all, these are jumping off points for our mixed media pages. I like to tear up my papers because I really love the decor edge that it creates. But you are more than welcome to also cut them up, let it have the crisp edges. It's also good to have a mix of go with whatever technique appeals to you. But one of the best ways to start off is to just tear and cut and create a whole pile of really fun and inspiring collage materials. As I said, I couldn't find the paper I wanted in large enough sheets. I'm going to try my mixed media Lack Strathmore paper. And then I also picked up some drying toned paper and we're going to recreate an 18 by 24 inch sheet and then collage into that. I'm going to start with four of those pages. I'm going to lay them out so that they become pretend upper turn to 18 24 in sheet of paper. And then I'm going to use collage techniques, collaging materials and washi tape to assemble them into a large sheet. Now why if we're going to cut it up into smaller pages, are we putting it together into a large sheet? Well, let me tell you by focusing on it as a large sheet that then gets cut down. We are giving ourselves more creative freedom and flexibility and more surprise when we open up our assembled sketchbook and see what spreads we've actually created. We're definitely going to be cutting this apart, separating it back into 912 inch sheets. We're also then going to be cutting it down even further to make our 96 sheets, because in the end our finished sketch book is going to be four a two by 6 " in size. It's going to be rather thick, but ultimately it's pretty small. Every page is going to be considered a spread. We're going to be addressing it as one flat, bigger page. But ultimately, we're making a small sketchbook. But we want to go from big to small to get the creative surprises we're going to need a lot of glusticsn. I also described my fun washi tapes. I think to get myself started, since this drawing toned paper is pretty slippery against my art table, I'm just going to stick down a couple pieces of tape. Now you could do, I could tape the back and then cut this apart because really all of that's going to get hidden anyway. But I want a reason to use some washi tape because I have a lot of it and it's really fun. But I don't ever remember that. I have a lot of it. We're, I'm going to get a little clever and throw some of this in there too. Then that will become part of my collage, which will be pretty great. I'm just going to tear off a couple small pieces. I don't want it to go on the seam because remember we're cutting the seams, whatever actually I could do masking tape, I could do any tape, and then have that get incorporated into the artworks in the end. I'm trying this a different way. When I did this the first time, I used collage elements to hold the pieces together and see my tape. That's okay. It worked, okay. But I want to try something new. I want to challenge myself and I want to explore what adding this collage material to my process. A couple of sheets. A couple of sheets. Just a couple pieces of tape, Hold it down. Then I'm going to begin tearing, and collaging and gluing random pieces of paper. You could even create a pile ahead of time. Why don't I do that? I'm just going to start tearing up some other pieces that I have so that I don't have to get caught up thinking about it in the moment. Lots of these ones come from different. I think I was doing an abstract, October 1 year shaving cream marble in paper. This was painting with plastic dinosaurs. I don't want to create a bunch of rectangles. You want to make sure if you're going on a tearing spree, that you let it be a little random. You want big pieces and small pieces like this is a tiny section from a watercolor piece. But then I also want to get some larger pieces in here. This is where it gets fun because everybody is going to have different collage materials that they get excited by that they have on hand. You're going to have access to different magazines. You're going to have different sketches and things that you have created that you're now going to give new life to notes from a glass. All right, that's a good starting point. I'm just going to shove these off to the side. Now the other fun thing to do is to put some pieces of a torn up page on one giant spread and some on another. Because then you end up approaching them different ways depending on how they incorporate with the rest of the spread, as well as how they look when they're cut up. You just start gluing them down. You don't want to think about it. You don't want to start working on composition. It doesn't matter. Pages truly change so much when you go back into your sketchbook that you don't want to be limited in the beginning stages by anything. You can put on some really great music when you're doing this step and just start laying down random bits. Now we don't want to fill up the whole page because we're going to be mixed media, mix media. Mixed media, We're going to be using mixed media techniques to work back into our pages. We're going to be going over the magazine images. In some instances, we're going to be working in the empty space and connecting the two together. You don't want to overfill it, but you also don't want too much negative space. You really want to let there be enough. Because remember, these are little bits of inspiration that we're going to stumble across as we go back into our books. You want to have enough of that so that you've got some great jumping off points to begin your sketchbook spreads. Keep collaging until it feels relatively full. I like to spread all my papers out around me on the floor and then jump back and forth as I find interesting pieces of paper that I want to collage in. That's my pro tip is if you have the space, do all of your pages at once so that you can truly just go wild and have so much fun laying down magazine pieces. This one is not done, but I'm going to set it to the side, see it's attached enough because we know we're going to be cutting it apart. I'm going to jump to another page and get that one started. And then I'll come back to this one. I'm going to go ahead and get out some more paper and set up another one. This one I won't do the Washi tape. I'm going to show you how I originally approached this. I just laid out my papers and then I grabbed whatever glue stick is jumpy. Today, I just started getting the glue on the pieces. And then I would line my paper up and I might try to get it relatively relatively centered and stick one in the middle. Again, it's going to wibble, wobble, And it's going to be fine. We're going to cut these apart. If you two are also working with smaller pages and pretending that they're larger, you're going to have, it's not going to matter. There's no way to mess up this step, which I love. I know this one's going to get cut on the seams. Sometimes I like to line it up with the edges and sometimes I like to let it just go across this one. I'm going to go ahead and let it go across. Plus it also helps stabilize my pages, which is awesome. Then I'm going to grab a couple other fun sheets from my stash. I have too many, far too many stashes of collage papers. The other great thing with the big pages, those are great sections to put across where you know a Sam is going to be because then you know it's going to end up on more than one page. Which will be super fun and surprising to see how it changes your view of it when you look at it chopped up from a different angle or whatever the case may be, more of these pages in. You'll also notice that I'm not putting down a scrap paper to glue onto. It doesn't really matter if I get glue on this background because ultimately we're gluing all over it and we don't need to be precious about this at all. This is the wet rag is handy because We're going to get sticky. That's just the nature of collage, no matter how careful you are. And I'm just going to keep going, I'm going to keep adding collage bits and working back and forth between the two pages that I started as well as the other two. I'm going to do at least four pages. And that's what I recommend you do too. I recommend that you have at least four pages of giant sheets. Four big sheets that you're working with. Just keep going, keep adding bits to your big sheet. I have a mixed media drawing sheet that I started earlier. I've got a couple torn up sketches. This is a great use for those pieces that are pieces I no longer want to work on, or they're done, but I've moved on artistically. What do you do with them? You throw them away, not me. I save them and then I give them new life. You do want to make sure that you are pretty good about googling down your edges. I like to work abstractly. I tend to go for patterns and colors. And shapes go with whatever speaks to you. Now, this sketchbook is from a different class that I did with Heinrich. And the cool thing was eventually dismantled it to make stop motion, which means it's already falling apart. It makes for great materials. That's pretty good. That's probably as much as I need to put in this one, but we'll see when they're all done. I want these drawings to carry over. Before I go to another one, I'm going to jump back to that first one that I started and I'm going to lay some of this stuff down now that I've started adding some other collage elements. I love the repetition and when things pop up again in other pages, and then I get to treat them in a different way. All right? I think this one needs a little bit more. Something. A little something. I love that purple. At this point, I'm just going for things that strike me as interesting. Do one more thing across that same, I think there. Okay, this page is good. Let's do one more then. I've created a couple more on the side that I'm probably going to work with too. We'll see how big the sketchbook is. This one. I'm going to go back to my washi tape. I just love this donut wash tape. It's not hilarious. Washing tape is so neat, going to dry wipe off some sticky fingers at this stage, it looks pretty bizarre. These are not things that I would put together consciously. I've been very happy with the results of this process. I've definitely made some pieces that I would not have been able to without having a collage bits as a jumping off point. This one I have this one, this one that's not very colorful. Maybe I will add a little bit more into this because if it's looking sparse now, it's going to look even more sparse once I'm looking at the spread. Once it's cut down, that's my cue to add a little something else. Well, that one done, this one could use a little bit more. Then I have a couple others that I started earlier. I'm going to throw it on some washi tape because I love this peacock feather one so much. I'm going to treat it more like it's a torn piece of paper. You only need four. But I have 1234567, which is great because it'll give me a couple extra things for our demos later on. This may end up actually being two books, but we'll see. Go ahead and collage together your 18 24 sheets of paper. Remember, do not think about what you put down there. Just cut, tear, rip, and start gluing it down. Once all of our pages have been spiced up with collage areas, we're going to begin cutting them using an exact knife for a box cutter. Heading over to the next lesson to learn more about our class project. I'll see you there. 5. Cutting Pages: Welcome back. The ones that are like this where I created them in 18 way 24. ", I'm just going to go to, go ahead and take my scissors and just reseparate them. That is the easiest way to do that. If you did like I did just take your scissors and kind of cut along the collaged over edges. And it's okay if they have a little roughness to them. This got taped a little funky, you might end up having some bizarre edges. Yep, I overlapped there. So now I'm going to go ahead and separate these, which also overlapped a little bit. I'm going to use the top paper as my guide, and then I'm going to clean up my collaging edges and it's going to be just fine. Okay. That's okay. That one got a little chopped up. Not a big deal at all. This one's okay. Now I have these down into their 912 original sizes. I'm going to keep going and separating my sheets again. If you use a written 912 inch pages also, then all you have to do is cut those apart. These white ones were done on full 18, 24 inch papers, the ones that are toned, we're done on nine by 12. I can just quick trim those apart where the collage overlaps them. Then for the larger sheets, I'm going to get out my ruler and my exact knife and my cutting mat to trim those down. If you can't really see, you can flip it over and I can clearly see the seam on the back there. Great. Flip this one over. I can quickly cut that apart. Everything else is mixed media paper. These are the ones that were small pages that I turned into pages. I'm going to set those in my side. Then I'm going to cut all of these at the same time because this is large And I'm just going to go ahead and use my sketchbook pad as my cutting surface. I'm going to line these up. Then I'm getting my metal ruler. I am going to mark my middle. You might want to have a pencil on hand for this. Get my Exacto knife or your box cutter, whatever you have. Make sure your blade is sharp though, but be careful with a sharp blade. Actually, maybe I'll make two marks. Make mark at the bottom. Mark at the top. I've measured it halfway. I've lined up my ruler. I'm going to go ahead and start slicing through. I'm going to go slow and I'm going to keep going until I get through all of the pages. Now as they separate, I can start moving them aside. Side, that one side, that one, any of this stuff. Just don't worry about it. Keep going. You're not going to get it all in one cut. Just take your time. Keep working your way down the stack. Can you do readjust your ruler. That's fine. Don't cut yourself, please. Now, I'm going to stack all of these back up again. Now we're going to cut them in half again. I'm going to go ahead and mark the middle again. I always worry that I don't get the middle of things when I mark. I like to do it twice. Now we're working with 18. " half of 18 is nine. Put another mark down here. Line up, mark my ruler. Hold it down non firm, and do the same thing. Slowly cut through the whole stack. Don't worry if the papers come up, it's okay. Scoot to the side as they separate. All right. Stack I'm back up again. Now we're down to nine x 12. If you like me, we're working with smaller papers. This is where we add those to the stack. Now we have a giant stack cutting it again, so half of 126. So I'm going to go ahead and mark six. There we go. Okay, make sure they're stacked up nice and straight. Line up your ruler, hold it down really tight, don't let it wiggle and start cutting through again. This will be our last cut for our pages. We have a bunch of this happening and just pull it out of your way. At this point, I'm really just cutting along the edges of the paper, but the ruler is nice to make sure you don't bump yourself as we keep cutting through. All right, now we're going to stack up all of our pages. Again, this is a very thick sketch book. Now remember I use seven or 81824 inch pages. This could also very easily become two small sketchbooks. And that's probably what I'm going to end up doing so that I can show you these techniques a couple of different times. I mean, the next lesson where we will begin folding and attaching our sketchbook pages. 6. Assembling Sketchbook: Now we are going to begin folding our sketchbook pages and then gluing them together to assemble the interior of our mixed media collage sketchbooks. The first thing we want to do is we want to take our stack of nine x six inch papers and we are going to fold them in half. I'm going cross them over like that. I want to really make sure I have a nice crisp fold. To get that fold, you can use a Boon folder or you can just use the edge of a pencil or pen. Either works great then I'm just going to keep folding and stacking. We want to fold it so that our collage side is on the inside. You also want to make sure that you keep your pages separate if you've got thicker paper. I tried that mixed media paper and actually it's a little hard to fold but it's not cracking. That thicker paper worked out fine. I'm just going to keep folding and stacking until everything has been folded in half with a nice crisp badge. Now, if you have some thinner papers, you could do a couple at a time. Most of mine are pretty thick. And then I've got some of this collage piece at the crease is thicker. I have to negotiate with it a little bit to get it to fold there. I could cut like this. If it starts popping off, I might just cut this part of it off and let it end at the fold, but we'll tackle that when we get into our pages. Now, just keep folding and stacking. And I'm going to go ahead and speed up the video so that you don't have to watch me fold and stack all these pages. I will see you soon for the next step of our sketchbook construction. All right. I'm on my last page folded. This is how thick our sketchbooks are going to be, give or take. If you did about four pages, your sketchbook will be about this size. Once all the papers are folded, it's time to start gluing them together. Don't open your pages to see how they look. That's part of the fun. I'm going to go ahead and flip the first page so that it opens on the left side. And I'm going to get my glue stick to my exact knife so I don't stab myself. Put that off to the side, you won't be needing it again. All right. Now this is when it's good to have a scrap sheet of paper because now I don't want to get glue on the outside. My sketchbook page is going to be opening to the left. And I'm going to go and glue all around the edges a little bit in the middle. Now I'm going to keep going. Sketchbook pages opening to the left. I'm going to put that down and I'm going to really rub it to get all the glue to stick. Now we have pages that open, so we're going to keep going. I'm going to go ahead and glue all around the edges. Our cover is not going to be going over the outside edge, it's going to be a rough edge sketchbook. It's opening to the left. Make sure this one's opening to the left. Go ahead and stick it down. Now we want to make sure that it's okay if this part gets a little funky, but you are going to have a binding. You do want to make sure that this edge stays, even as you squash these pages down and the stack grows, it's very easy for this edge to start to go at an angle, which is okay. I already have one. Well, that glue is still wet. I'm going to scooch the silver a little bit, but this is the one part where it just looks a little nicer. If you make sure that that edge is there, we can clean this edge up if we want to. We can't clean up the folded edge. It is going to get hidden. We are going to wrap it with a cover that's not such a big deal, but try to keep your pages lined up on the fold side. I'm going to go ahead and keep going. I've got my, make sure it's opening to the left, lay it down, line it up on the folded side, squash that side first and then you can smooth over to the next one and repeat again. I'm going to go ahead and speed up the video here so that you, so we can get to the next step in this. But keep folding your pages until everything has been attached into one big sketch book block. All right, there is my last page. Now that all of our pages are glued together, we're going to put a scrap sheet of paper on top. And then we're going to stuck a couple of heavy books on top. And we're going to leave it to dry for about an hour or so. We could go ahead with the next step, but I highly recommend we let the settle. Plus we want to make sure that all of our pages stay together. So I'm going to go ahead and move that scrap paper over. Actually, I'm going to put one down underneath. I don't want my table to get glue on it. I'm going to go ahead and put that down. I'm going to put another scrap paper on top. And then I'm going to get a couple heavy books to stack on top. And then I'm going to let this sit for an hour. Now let's head on over to our next lesson, where we will attach the cover paper to finish off constructing our handmade sketch books. 7. Attaching Cover: Now it's time to attach the cover of our sketchbook. We're going to keep this pretty simple. We are going to have you can go with a decorative paper or you can go with a plan paper if you want to work into it later or you just want to keep your sketchbook exterior plane. That's completely up to you. I really love decorative paper and I have a lot of it. So this is a really good use for it and it gives my some personality and makes it fun to pick up and take places an art into. I have a sheet of paper that is bigger than my sketchbook, and I'll show you why in the demonstration. All right. Our book has dried. It is secure. It might be a little funky on the sides. I don't mind that if that bothers you. Don't know if you can see this. There's a couple of the pages that just got cut a little rough. You can go ahead and clean that up with an exacto knife or a box cutter. I'm not going to worry about it, I'm going to let it be now. Everything's attached, all of our pages are secured together. But we want to make this look a little bit more finished. You might have some glue that snuck around the edges onto the collage sides, but that will resolve itself as you open up your pages and start exploring the inspiration that you have collaged into this sketch book. Let's add a cover. I have a couple different pieces of decorative watercolor paper that I have cut down. I didn't measure them in the sense that, like, I knew I needed to be bigger. I knew I needed to be able to wrap. But I'm going to go ahead and glue it, and then I'm going to trim it Now, There's other ways to make book covers where it folds over the edges, but we have all of the pages you would end up collaging over this. I'm going to go ahead and let the cover end at the book edge itself and not wrap for that really crisp finished look that is nice in other sketchbook construction. When we glue this, we want to make sure that this attaches really well. We really want to focus on the spine of the book because this is where it can pop off a little bit. And then we want to fold it over a, I'm going to start with top cover edge and then I'm going to glue and keep wrapping it. You'll see as we go, I'm going to go ahead and lay on my glue all around the outside edges of the top page and across the middle I want to really have a nice amount of glue down because I want my cover to be very secure. We're going to be working into this book a live then my paper is bigger than I need it to be, and I'm not going to worry about that. I'm going to go ahead and you could put it up to the edge if you want to. I like just trimming that off after the fact. I'm going to attach this part down. It's a little way with the glue. That's why it's nice to have some extra space that border works well for that. Now the top is attached, then I'm going to go ahead and put glue along here just to give it a little edge to glue to. This also helps reinforce the gluing that we did inside. I'm also going to go ahead and put down some glue on the paper itself, roughly the height of the book. Then I'm going to start to wrap it up. Really Spend some time. Go ahead and increase that a little bit. I'm really going to spend some time burnishing this so that the outside paper sticks. Now you don't have to use pretty paper. You could just use plain paper and work back into it. You could keep it just plain because you like a plain covered sketchbook. I really enjoy giving my sketch books personality and I have a lot of decorative paper around. This is a nice use for the bigger sheets. All I'm going to flip this back over and I'm going to crispin up this edge. I'm just going to pinch and run my fingers along it and pages into that cover paper. And then also just spend a little bit more time pressing down the paper to the section that I already glued. Now, the other really cool thing about these sketchbooks is that there isn't a front and there isn't a back. They just are, they just exist. However, I happen to grab it and pick it up and open it, that is the orientation for that moment of artwork. Now I'm going to go ahead and put some glue down. This last cover. It's okay if that comes off. This is why we're going to take some time to let the glue set, there we go, and then wrap this back around. It's a lot of glue and a lot of moisture from that glue. Unfortunately, we're going to let this dry again for about an hour. Overnight's even better. You're going just leave it and then come come back to this lesson in the morning. That is even better. All right. Now our paper is attached. I recommend waiting to trim it until the glue has set, because then you're not going to have the sketchbook body inside. This big register in the middle isn't going to slip. But if you want to do it ahead of time, you're more than welcome to just know you might end up with a little less clean edge. I'm going to go ahead and let this sit. I'm going to get my, actually I won't need scrap baker of this time because all of the glue is on the inside. I'm going to put a couple of books on top of this. I'm going to let it dry for about an hour and then I'm going to come back and I'm going to trim off the edge then. And then will be all set to begin working back into it with a couple fun mixed media techniques that I'm going to share with you in our upcoming lessons. Let this dry, go make a cup of coffee or a cup of tea, and I'll see you back here in about an hour. All right. The final step in constructing your sketchbook is to the excess cover paper. Now that our glue is dried, we are ready to do that. I do want to be a little bit careful as I crease and fold my front and back covers because it is possible for the binding part to pop open. It's okay if it does, if this comes detached and this cover are so well secured that it's not going to be a problem. But if you do want to be a little cautious of that, then just give it a little crease that you're working with it and not against it. I'm going to go ahead and use my exact knife to trim this up. If you want to, you can grab a ruler to really help ensure that your cut is neat. I'm just going to line it up with the edge of my sketch book cover and carefully cut through a couple of times. Then I'm going to save this excess paper for collaging because that's what I do. Then I'm going to go ahead and spin it around. Going to get these two side edges cut first. Again, line up your ruler, hold it down, The sent tight a couple times through to cut off that excess paper. Then I'm going to do the same thing and open it up all the way, let the binding break low. Now I've got the thick edge of my sketchbook, so I don't need my ruler. I'm going to very carefully gently cut through until that strip of extra paper comes off. And then I'm going to spin it around because I'm right handed. And I'm going to do the same thing on the other side there. Now my sketchbook is covered and beautiful on the outside and filled with collage inspiration on the inside. But we are going to start going into with our mixed media techniques now. We're going to be working on this sketch book a lot. You might find that like this page has come up a little bit. I can sneak a paint brush with glue on there in there to secure it. Or I can just let it be might work on it down the road, the binding is. That's okay. That happens sometimes. Again, if instead of the glue stick, I could have gone in with some liquid white glue and painted that binding first. But I know that this is secured with how well I glued down the front and the back cover. So I'm not going to worry about a popped binding because I know I'm going to go back into this a lot and I'm okay with that popped edge. But if that bothers you, go ahead and drop in some liquid glue and give it a nice squish. And you might even want to put some weight on it this way to help your paper adhere to the binding. Now that our sketch book cover has dried and our sketchbook is nice and secure, it is time to begin working back into them. Let's head over to the next lesson to begin learning about the mixed media techniques we will be exploring in this portion of the class. I'll see you there. 8. Mixed Media Techniques: Now let's begin diving back in to our mixed media collage sketchbooks. And take them from a collage sketchbook to a mixed media collage sketchbook. We're going to explore different ways that you can approach using ink. As well as colored pencil, paint markers, brush pens, color and value as well as Nat and shiny. Let's dive in and I will show you some of the ways that I have been inspired in my mixed media collage sketchbooks. All right, now it is time to begin working back into our mixed media sketchbooks. Here is the one that I created. I'm still working on it. I've got a lot of unfinished pages left to go. But here are some of the pieces that I've worked on. The great thing is these books, like I said, they don't have a front. They don't have a back. They don't have a top or bottom. Just you open it up and you go. Which is one thing that I really love it. Just there's no pressure to it. It's just incredibly fun. And you just dive in and create as you're inspired by your collage pieces. This one is a combination of metallic watercolor ink and some fine liner. That's it, I think everything else was already on the page. This one is a work in progress where the collage pieces where this red section, this little bit of white and this corner of shaving cream marbling that I had done. I'm working back into this one with brush pen currently, and then a little bit of pasta. This one was brush pen and fine liner. This one is a work in progress using pasta for the white and the black. Everything else was co, the red, Everything else was collage already. A lot of times what I like to do is continue the color and continue some of the line quality or the shape quality that I see. Sometimes I like to change it completely. So this one I've gone in with some of the color inspired by the pinks up here, but otherwise I've left it. I've just continued the black line expanding out from shapes that I saw in some of the watercolor details Or continuing this rectangular motif over here on the left. Sometimes what I put into the piece is relatively simple and sometimes it gets a little more complex then, like in this piece where you can't really tell where the collage begins and ends and the mixed media techniques begin and end. It's very important to just have fun with it and really play. I do a lot of inspiration from the color scheme of the collage materials as well as the textures that they might have. Just continuing out with the materials, this one was all done. This was brush pen. A little bit of extra work with some blue fountain pen and some fine liner. We're just going to have some fun and see what inspirations we can draw from the books that we created. Sometimes you collage materials might pop up. I use this book a lot. I take it all over the place with me. Sometimes I'm going to need to go back in with some glue and just clean up some of my collage areas. Let's work back into our book and start getting inspired by what we see now. The great thing is your book, other than the size and how we constructed them, the interior of your book is going to be completely different than mine. But the application of mixed meaning materials can relate across any sketchbook spread. In any cosh, sketchbook that you or I, or anyone else might create. I'm just going to start flipping through, looking for some inspiration, seeing what draws my eye, like the openness of this one. The other thing is you can also decide when a page is finished and when it's finished For the moment, this one is probably going to be something I work back into over and over and over again. But this is a great way to start showing you how I begin to incorporate the details of the collage with the negative space on the page to make it all come together. Here's my travel art kit bag. This is almost always with me in my purse or in my car. I always like to have a couple of different brush pens with me. I like to have a fine liner. I really love my pastas. I usually carry a black and white. At least I'm really interested in different ballpoint pen colors. This is a great way to get four colors out of one pen. I really love my fountain pens. I've got my, My Sailor Food Day One. I've got my Zebra fountain pen. And then I also really love colored inks. As I said, I have some very inexpensive colored fountain pens. And then just some other, whatever else I happen to have around for this piece. I really liked what I did in that other section where I, for this same sketchbook page popped up. I want to do what I did there and continue these lines across and start bridging these two pieces. The other great thing is I can paint back into this. I can use colored pencil. I can use any kind of inking materials I might have. There's really no limit to what materials you can use. I consider this whole entire sketchbook to be an exploration of process, and technique, and media. It completely removes the pressure of what I'm creating. I'm just going to start continuing those lines. This is a very intuitive process for me, which is the way I prefer to work. I like to just let the materials and the moment and the marks and whatever happens along the artistic journey guide what I create. There might be some awkward moments in your book that's happened to me a lot. Just know that he gets just a sketch book. And it may remain awkward in the end. But chances are what I've discovered is that it always resolves itself. I just have to let the materials and the sketch pages guide me, and then I can find my way and make it happen. Now, there's a way to continue the inking. This piece was only done in pencil. The sketch I tore up never had anything more going on there. I'm going to go ahead and just start laying down some color and blocking that in because it's essentially a mostly blank section, which doesn't happen often in my collage sketchbooks. I want to take advantage of it, really let that become something that evolves into something new. I like to go beyond the collage page. I also like to mirror different colors on different sides, but I'm going to come back to that. That red will make another appearance. But I'm going to come down here. I like to jump around too because I have a new ideas. And just to start blocking in some things I said, I tend to lean towards abstraction in my work. But that doesn't mean that you can't get some figurative work in here. Some different subject matters. A lot of it's probably going to depend on what you collaged in this color doesn't really match that. That's not a problem, really. What I want you to take away from this part of the process is a sense of play and experimentation and wonder because you're going to discover things that you never, ever would have made otherwise through this book. And I think you're going to happily return back to it time and time again. Isn't that the best just to be in the moment of creating? There's no pressure. There's no, there's no expected outcomes. It's just a, just a chance to play and explore and see what happens. You're always going to be surprised and it's going to be wonderful. Sometimes I like to have colors repeating. I've got this pink going through and I'll come back in and mirror that brighter pink on the other side then let's see, now it's time to go. I can have some fun just going in with my paint markers. So I'm going to grab my larger one. I also really enjoy metallics. I'm grab some metallic sharpies and I've got some prisma color markers that never get enough. These giant pastas are just so much fun because you can just fill a section so fast if you don't have any paint markers, but you want to get yourself a little supply treat. I highly recommend picking up a black and white pasta. That's what I started with. I just had black and white. And that has been great. It's nice to go across the pages. That is a great unifying thing. How can you bring those together? Go ahead and go in with some metallic filling in these lines. Ideally, I don't want you to spend a ton of time analyzing your page. I want you to be really in the moment and aware you're creating. But I really just want you to have fun and just let the collage and the art supplies that you're adding for your mixed media just guide what happens next. This page is turning into a lot of color blocking, unifying the design across the sections. The other great thing about a book like this is that we don't really have to worry about what our art skill is. That's why it truly is for creatives of all levels. Because you don't have to be able to draw, you don't have to be able to, you don't have to know composition. You can just create whatever makes you happy. If you do have more art experience, work that in. Incorporate any subject matter you like. Whatever materials you have on hand, even if it's just going in with some ballpoint pen. This is not done, but this is a way to show you how you can go in. You can continue the lines, you can mirror the colors. You can unify everything by going across and connecting across your collage pieces so that it truly becomes a whole spread. This is very much a work in progress to the other book that I made. Pretty random, but I love it. So I'm going to go ahead and just continue some of these shapes and make them more tall verticals. Go ahead, go right over that green collage piece, see what happens after that. Now we have a lot of white space in this one, so I'm going to go ahead and get out some different colored inks and do some painting into that. Let's I've got some FW Pearlescent acrylic ink that I'm excited to use and then I also have some Liquitex acrylic ink also. Let's see, I don't have any, but I can make some to make some. Let's make some green. If you're going to do any color mixing, if you're new to mixing colors, you want to start with your lightest color. Grandma Yellow. A little bit of blue. Now I have green. Keep it very loose, playful. The watercolor section of paper that is collaged here has some of the yellow showing through too. So I'm just going to play with that a little bit. Jump back and forth between the two. Mix them right on the page. This just gives me even more to work from because I keep going back and forth between media because I'm using a wet media, I'm going to have to let this page before I do other things to it, paint right over it. Made it really pretty. It's gorgeous. That's the other really fun thing about mixing right on the paper, you end up with colors that you weren't trying for that are just so beautiful. I love that. I threw some over here to throw in some of the pearlescent. It doesn't have to make sense, right? Because we're just playing. This page very much is one where I'm just embracing the play and the materials. This is also great to do with pages that you're not super excited about. Inevitably, because we randomly collaged, there will be pages where you're just like, yeah, I just don't know, chant. Those are the best pages because then you are, you're not attached to them. Whatever happens is fine. If it ends up being a nice experiment page, then move on and never open that section again. That's fine. But it could end up being something you really love. You just never know some of the pages where I was really not terribly excited about going into it, but I wanted to work in my book and just went forward anyway. Ended up being some of my favorites. Don't count an artwork out until you're all done. You just never know what it's working its way toward. But coming all right, I'm going to go ahead and let this one dry and then I will work back into that one a little later. All right. Now that the water color is dried on this piece, I want to go back in and do some art inking. I've got my pastas, I've got some prisma color markers. This is the point where you just keep continuing to get inspired by everything that's going on in this piece. Now I want to take some of this pink and carry that through. This is a great opportunity to use these. The cool thing is prisma Color markers, unlike pastas, don't completely mask out what's happening. I can still see some of the shine through from the metallic watercolors. I used metallic acrylic inks. I love that. I've never actually layered these two together. Now in an instant obsessed what's happening here. I'm definitely going to be doing that again. And I think that has been the most fun thing about keeping a mixed media college sketchbook. It's just all of the amazing, inspiring moments that I've stumbled upon by just focusing on play and experimenting and seeing what happens. Let's go in with some pasta, add a nice harsh edge. The pasta will completely block out what's underneath it, but I also want to just kind of keep it loose so you just keep having fun. If you're enjoying something, keep going. If you're not, keep changing it up like that. And now I want to add some white jump around, flip it around. There's no set direction to our books. Whatever feels right is right here. I think that's all that one needed. I could go further, but I'm really happy with how this one turned out. Then I would just keep going to another page and keep exploring, play around, flip through your book, see what pages speak to you. Experiment with whatever art materials you have on hand. Everything I have tried has worked, and I've had some really fun discoveries such as the newest one where the reaction of prisma color over acrylic ink or the metallic specifically. I would love to see how these turn out and the different spreads you create. I hope that you will share those along the way and in the student gallery on the class projects page. If you have some inspiring combinations or Aha moments, please be sure to share those in the discussion section. That is such a wonderful way for our class to become an even more vibrant community of creatives and artists. By learning from one another, sharing your project is really fabulous and including some notes there about what you did and what you think and how it went, and maybe some ideas you have for the future. But it would also be really fun to talk about it and be able to interact more with each other. Heading over the discussion section, if there's anything you want to share, any questions you have, I'm here to help. And I really love the community that we have skillshare and that I get to celebrate all the amazing, fun stuff that is art with you. I hope you are feeling incredibly inspired and excited to get into your mixed media college Sketchbooks. Let's head it over to our final lesson where we wrap up the class before I send you off to keep creating in what will hopefully become a long term new art practice for you. We'll see you in our final lesson. 9. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for taking this class and exploring handmade sketchbooks as well as collage mixed media techniques. I hope you are feeling inspired and energized and that you just can't wait to keep working back into your mixed media collage sketchbook. I'd love to see how your sketchbooks turned out and a few of your mixed media collage sketchbook spreads. So I really hope that you will head over to the class project section and upload some photos of what you are working on to the student gallery. Remembering that you can come back any time and add as many more photos as you like. This type of class is one where the learning and the experience go on and on and on. I really hope you will come back several times and update your class project so that we can all get inspired by each other and excited by what we're all creating and continue on this artistic journey together. I'd also really appreciate it if you took the time to leave a review. Student feedback is the best way for me to continue growing as a teacher. And it means the world to me to hear what my students think about my classes so that I can continue to improve them and grow. As here on skill share as well as in my other teaching opportunities. Thank you in advance for your time and I really appreciate, and I'm excited to hear what you think about how this class went. I really enjoy sharing my artistic journey on my social media channels and Youtube, but I also love celebrating what my students have created in their classes. If you are interested in your class project, you can add your social media handle to your text and then I can as I share your work on line, celebrating all of the beautiful sketchbook spreads that I know our class is going to create. If you post your work on line, I really hope that you will tag me, a Elizabeth underscore welfare, so that I can see all the fun that you're having as you continue to work back into your mixed media collage, sketchbooks and continue this artistic practice. You can also join me over on Youtube where I share art process videos, time lapses of what I'm working on, different art adventures that I go on, and what I'm up to. If you would like to stay up to date on my newest classes, be sure to click the Follow button below till next time.