Pocket Pages: A 7-Day Mini Sketchbook Challenge

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to my new class. Pocket pages, a seven day mini sketchbook. Challenge. If you've already done my previous classes in creating a sketchbook habit on a daily basis with sketchbook journaling and with everyday pages, then you're already taking some huge steps towards building that momentum and improving your well being through creating a sketchbook journaling habit on a day to day basis. And now it's time to strengthen that habit and take the next step, and this time, we're going small. Pocket pages, a seven day mini sketchbook challenge is designed as a natural extension of your existing practice. It deepens your routine without adding any pressure and not worrying about perfectionism, and it just builds this continuous momentum that you've already started with the other classes in the series so that you can create on a daily basis. But before we begin, let me be absolutely clear. This is not a replacement of your sketchbook journaling or your everyday pages. Those lovely practices are still part of your daily routine. This is just an addition into that routine of maintaining a sketching habit on a daily basis, and it simply just adds a helpful companion, a tiny window of opportunity to make sure that you stay consistent, even when life gets absolutely hectic, which it does for a lot of us. In this class, we will be focusing on quick, intuitive daily sessions, simple thought journal moments, small doodles and spontaneous sketches of your surroundings, wherever you are at any moment on that particular day where you can just go in and do a nice little pocket pages, no researching a topic, no planning a full spread, no multi day process, just seven days of mini pages designed to take part in your daily routine that will last only five to 10 minutes of your time. This short challenge will help you stay connected to your creative routine. It will remove pressure and perfectionism, so there won't be any stress of creating perfect pages. You can leave that to your everyday pages, making art anywhere anytime that fits within your schedule, and it doesn't have to be something that you have to pre plan. It should just come naturally, and therefore, they're going small, which will aid in the consistency of you creating on a daily basis. I'll start the class off by talking through the benefits of going small compared to our other classes where we were using medium to large sized sketchbooks and concentrating on bigger topics. We will then move on to looking at the class supplies that you're going to need in order to complete this challenge, and I promise you, there's very minimal supplies that you're going to need for this class. Then we're going to move on to the exciting stuff where you're going to watch me take on this seven day challenge of pocket pages. Yes, you heard me right. I'm going to be doing the challenge continually for seven days, and I've recorded it for you to watch and be inspired by my daily routine. But don't worry. You don't have to watch 7 hours of me drawing and doodling and putting thought journals down. I have sped it up into short two minute videos over the course of seven days. Once you've watched all the lesson videos, you'll be ready and inspired to complete seven tiny spread each one capturing a moment, an object, a feeling or something that you've observed in your day that really stood out to you that you wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't had sat down and opened up your pocket pages. And that's it. I know you're super excited. So move those big sketchbooks out of the way for now, and let's focus on pocket pages and going small, grab yourself a nice drink, get yourself a nice little treat, sit back, relax, and let's get started with the class. 2. Class Project: Okay, welcome back. Let's now start by going through what your class project is going to be all about and it's really simple and easy. Let's put things into perspective before we start our pocket pages challenge. Step one of your class project is to just watch all of the lessons before you watch me do my seven day challenge videos. So just watching lessons two till seven completely within the class. Step two, all you need to do is get yourself nice and comfy, sit back, get yourself a nice drink so that you can relax for a few minutes and then watch my seven day challenge videos, which are from lessons eight to lessons. 15. They're only a couple minutes long so you can just sit back and enjoy the journey with me as I do my pocket page. And then step three is to get your pocket pages and your supplies, your pen ready and warmed up so that you can start the challenge for yourself in the next seven days where you'll be using your pocket pages to do these beautiful little pages of thought journals and quick little doodles and you'll have a collection of seven beautiful spreads for this challenge. Then step four, all you need to do is take lovely pictures of all of your work that you've done over the last seven days and upload it to the class Project Gallery so that we can all see your beautiful progress and your beautiful pocket pages. Then the most important step, step five is to leave a lovely review on the class so that other students like yourself can find the class and learn from your experience, and so we can all enjoy this wonderful adventure into improving our well being by doing pocket pages. That's it, that's all your class project is all about. I know you're super excited to get started, so let's now move on to the next one. 3. Why Go Small?: Yoke, welcome back. Let's now start the class off by explaining the purpose and the benefits of doing these beautiful pocket pages and why we're going small. Number one, low pressure and highly achievable, a tiny spread is easy to start and easy to finish, perfect for staying creative, even when you're short on time. And that's what it's all about. It's about using these opportunities that you get throughout your busy life, throughout the schedules that you have from a day to day basis, and using that in this small format where you can quickly get some thought journals down, some doodles down just to really get yourself warmed up and maintain this momentum of sketching and writing on a daily basis. Number two, quick and spontaneous, no planning, no long sessions, just a few minutes to connect with your surroundings and your sketchbook. Again, we're not focusing on huge planning sessions or building beautiful everyday pages. That is for the everyday pages habit that we've got. This is to ensure that certain times in your life, you may not have enough time to do your everyday pages or your detailed sketchbook journaling. Then this is where these pocket pages comes into it. If you start the habit, then you will become used to doing quick little spontaneous journal entries and sketches on a daily basis. Number three, it's great for sharpening your observation skills. Limited space means capturing only what matters, which strengthens your visual intuition. I know that sounds really nice and complex, but basically all that's about is that the more you practice doing quick little doodles by observing your surroundings, it's just going to build that experience and really improve your skill level quickly drawing and taking notes, which will in turn help you in your sketchbook journaling adventures on the bigger sketchbooks and even in your everyday pages. Observing and drawing is a great way to practice and keep those beautiful creative juices flowing in those fingers. Number four, confidence building, finishing a small spread each day gives you that encouraging sense of accomplishment and this will also encourage you to complete your bigger sketchbooks in your everyday pages in sketchbook journaling, because having a smaller, more accomplishable page that you complete on a day to day basis, it just warms you into this habit and routine because that's what it's all about building this routine and habit by doing something every day on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And this is always going to build confidence and it's going to improve your practice. Number five, it's always with you. Your pocket sketchbook fits anywhere, so your creativity becomes something that you can take with you into real life and it's not just something that's reserved for your desk. This is the entire point of this class. The portability of pocket pages is what's going to determine your ability to create and maintain this habit because ultimately, sometimes in life, we get really excited about starting something, and then we can do it for a couple of days or maybe a couple of weeks, and then life just gets too busy, and then you stop doing it and it just gets parked on your desk or goes on your shelf. That happened to me so many times. So making this a nice, small challenge, which is achievable that you can do on a daily basis is what really helped me, and I want this to be something that helps you start to get into this routine of sketching on a daily basis. So that's about it. That's the main reasons for pocket pages going small so we stay consistent and we can continually maintain that momentum of sketching on a daily basis to improve our well being. That's it now. Let's now move on to the class supplies. I know you're really excited about that one. So let's move on to that one next. 4. Class Supplies: Okay, welcome back now for the exciting stuff and having a look at the class supplies. As I mentioned earlier on, there's only a few supplies that you need to get started quickly in this class. So let's start with the first main supply, and that is our pocket sketchbook. On the screen, you can see, I've got four different sketchbooks laid out. Now, I highly recommend that for this challenge and to maintain this sketching habit and keeping things portable that you go to a six size or smaller. Now, A six, for me, I think, is absolutely brilliant because number one, it's available everywhere. And number two, you can get various different types of sketchbooks that will suit every personality and every need. So on the screen over here, some of these sketchbooks you've seen in my previous classes on the series of Everyday Pages and Sketchbook journaling, so a lot of these you may have seen, and there's some new ones that I've started using myself that you may already use. So if it is, then great. But it's just a nice little introduction to the types of books that you can get for this class. But if you don't have these brands or these specific books, then that's absolutely fine. Just get yourself something that's available, that's not too expensive, and it's available in your locality so that you can get more than one once you start getting into this habit because you're going to start filling these up really quickly, and it will maintain this kind of archival facility where you can just have lots and lots of little mini sketchbooks that you can put together and then reflect on once you've completed them. So I think it's a fantastic size to go for. So let's start on the right hand side over here, and this one is just a standard sketchbook, ASIC size, and it's a stapled sketchbook, so it has just a few pages in it. It's blank paper, and this is actually my go to sketchbook. I use this for everything. I use this for daily doodling, for taking notes. I actually use this a lot of the time for my pocket pages because it's really cheap to buy versatile and it's very good with a lot of different inks and mediums and pens. That's another factor to think about. You don't want to buy something that's got cheap paper in it, that's going to kind of, like, you know, wear away or bleed through or just get torn and ripped apart after a few days. You want something that's going to last you that's decent quality, but that's something that's not too expensive. And I think this one is absolutely great. This is by company C white. It's available in the UK. It's a UK brand. But again, all of these products and things that I'm showing you on this class are going to be available as links in the resource sheet. So do check it out if it's something that you're interested in. So this one has just got standard cartridge paper in it, nice decent thickness. It can take fountain pen, and it can take ballpoint, ink. It can even take marker work on it as well. I think this is a fantastic option. It has nice rounded corners which are great to put in your pocket or in your wallet or bag. So that's a great option A six in size. The second option here that I've got is I've got a couple of options here, actually. These again, are ASIx in size. This one is a soft cover book, and it has a elastic closing mechanism on it. And this one underneath, this one is a beautiful Japanese brand book, which I started using quite a lot recently with really high quality paper in it. This one by rodeo, this one on top. I'll show you this quickly. This is just a dot grid book. So you've got the dot grid on it, which again, sometimes I like to use dot grid, especially if I'm doing planning work or if I aim to kind of, like, you know, do some more technical drawings. But it depends on whatever your preferences. I would say for pocket journaling, maybe use a lined book or just plain paper and drawing the lines. But if you find drawing in the lines a bit of a FAF, then just go ahead and get yourself a lined book. And I think that will get you easily started in this challenge. So this rodeo book, really nice quality. It's got the kind of standard binding on the back. It's a kind of saddle stitched binding. So you've got the saddle stitched. You've got the lovely paper inside, just like it is with this one. This one is by MD. It's MD paper, which is just fantastic. So again, very portable, very nice and portable. Lay flat open, which is really good. They open up easily, and you can just quickly get started with them. And both of these books have really good quality paper in them. You can use fountain pens on them. You can use fine liners. Most pens will work great. However, they are quite expensive, so I wouldn't say that go and get yourself one of these straightaway for this challenge if you haven't got one. But if you do have one or if you've got experience of using this, then this is a great option. So you got the soft cover, perfect bound books over here, fantastic option on that one. So let's just put that one back to the side. Then this third one that I've got down here, again, this is the lovely, perfect bound, saddle stitched effect. This one is by PIP and I featured this in my previous classes. This is a fantastic paper. It's really good for multimedia work, you can see over here, the pages are really nice and thick. They can take quite a lot of different mediums. Watercolor I wouldn't use on this, but then again, this challenge is not about using watercolor and creating beautiful artwork. This is just about doing quick writing and quick doodling in. Pi the cover on this is really thick, so that's something to be wary about. I personally don't like to use the books that have a thick cover on them purely because they can be a bit rigid and if I've got it in me pocket or if I've got it in me bag, I don't want it to poke out. And again, this is quite an expensive book, so I probably wouldn't recommend using this for your pocket pages. This is probably a good one to use for your everyday pages or your sketchbook journaling. But I thought I'd just show you this and mention that you can use this for your pocket pages, but again, it's an expensive option. So that one was by PIP. And then on the end over here, I've got a couple of options here. I've got hardcover books, so these are hardcover finishing, and I generally don't really use these for pocket pages, but I thought I'll just show you. This is just a standard A $6 rowdy, lovely little sketchbook with cartridge paper in it. Really nice thick paper. Use this type of a book if you want to if you have a strong bag that you can put it in. Definitely not one that you want to put in your pocket because it's going to have the sharp corners, whereas with the other soft cover books, we've got nice rounded corners here with the Midori one, we don't really have rounded corners, but again, it's a soft cover, so it shouldn't really hurt your leg or your side of your waist when you've got it in your pocket. Again, that was the hardcover by Dalla Roni. I've used this book a couple of times, not for pocket pages, but more for doing artwork in. So that's a hardcover option. And this one is actually a new book that I found fairly cheap from Kenji. This is an ASIx book and what I really liked about this was that it's actually not that heavy and it's got the elastic enclosure on it, really nice funky design. And it's got line paper in it, so I've not tested this one out, so I don't know if you have. It feels quite thin, so probably not great for fountain pens, but it is one that I'm going to probably test out later on. But I thought I'd mention that having a cheap book like this with a hard cover can be quite durable. And if you're using mediums that are not fountain pens, then you might even be able to fill this up fairly quickly, and it could be quite useful. So, again, that was the hardcover range, and that's really it on the sketchbooks on the A six size. Now, as I mentioned, A six is MGT however, sometimes you might want to be even more portable than A six. So naturally, the next size below A six in our European sizing is a seven. However, there is a middle ground that I use sometimes. So let's move these ones out of the way for now. So this is the middle ground book size that I use, and these are really cheap to get. These are by rodeo, great paper inside them. You get these as dot grid paper. I think these were initially called um, cash book papers or cash booklets or something like that used for kind of recording down cash values for businesses. Fantastic size. I think this is such a beautiful, portable size. It fits in your hand, really light weight, and it's fairly cheap to buy. You can get these in packs. Again, I leave a link in the resource sheet where you can get these from. Really, really like this. I like the round edges in this. And again, one of my favorite brands, Rodeo, the paper is great to write on, and Dot grid works fine. So this is a great option for your pocket page. Now, I've got another option, whether you want to explore this or not, it's entirely up to you. But what I tend to do sometimes is I get my A six book, which is this one by Swite. And because these are fairly cheap, I trim these down. So I'll show you the one that I've trimmed down. So I've trimmed this one down so that it's a similar size to this rodeo so that I've got myself a nice kind of tailor made pocket pages to work on in my pocket page challenge And my daily kind of pocket pages. So like this, what I've basically done is I've just trimmed this down like this to match the size of my rodeo. And actually, I used this quite a lot. And in my seven day challenge that you're going to be watching, this is the book that I use all the time. So what I tend to do is I tend to round the edges with a round corner cutter. And it works great. So it's a nice, kind of, like, makeshift job if you can't get hold of something that's portable that you specifically want a specific size for. So great little option. If that's what you want to do. I thought I'll just show you that. So that's it for the pocket page kind of size, the kind of pocket notebook size that's smaller than a six. Let's now move on to even smaller size over here. So I've got the A seven. I mean, look at that. That just looks so nice and cute, doesn't it? Small little teeny weenie book. So we've got the pocket kind of size over here, and then we've got the A seven. So you can see it's even smaller. So as a comparison, if we put them side by side, this one is a seven. This one is what we call pocket size, and then let's get the other one out. This one is a six. You can see, they're nice and small and portable. I really, really like this one because it's kind of got that lovely paper in it that I like to use my fountain pens on. So you can see over here, I've used fountain pen. I've tested other pens. I didn't really work on it, but fountain pen works great. My kind of fine liner that I use, which we'll explain in the next part of the class works fantastic on this. And again, it's just great as a kind of carry around pocket pages journal. This one that I've got is lined. This comes in plain, and I I think it comes in dot grid, but I'm not 100% sure, but a great option. However, I know it's nice and small and cute, but this is quite an expensive option. I think this probably cost around about 15 pounds, yes, it cost a lot. So it's a bit of an investment this. So I would probably not go ahead and buy this straightaway unless it's the paper that you've already using, then you'd really like to use it. So great little option over there. And that's nearly it, but I do have a final option for you. Again, if it's something you want to explore, so let's have a look at that one next, and that one is going even smaller. Yes, I know what you're thinking. How small is he going to go? It's going to become microscopic, and we're not even gonna be able to write on it, but now this is my own creation. What I did over here is I've gone ahead and designed these mini booklets, what I call mini booklets. And if you just have a look at the size of them and move these across, just get the red one there. So you can see this one is even smaller than my a seven book. And these are kind of make your own style sketchbooks that I've actually done a class on so if you haven't watched that class and you're interested to see how I make these then do check that class out really simple with simple tools that you have lying around at your house. And I think it's a great way. So you can have a lot of fun making, like, a series of these little booklets with the paper that you have at hand. You just do a little flick through. You can see I've got a few pages in there. And what I've actually done is I actually made enough spreads in there so that I can complete one of these mini boooks in seven days. I'll have a collection of lots of these cute little books and you'll have a nice little archive in your shelf with some fantastic colors. Again, if you want to check out how I make these and something that you might be interested in doing yourself, then do check out that class in creating your own sketchbooks. That was the final size shape that I've got. If we just have a look at all of them on the screen now, so there we go. We've got a nice little collection of portable books that we can use for our pocket pages challenge. So do make sure that you grab yourself a nice book, check out the price range, go to your local art store. Sometimes these smaller books are even available in the pound store. Sometimes you can even buy really cheap versions of but again, do be wary about buying the really cheap stuff because you don't want to start doing your challenge, and after, like, a couple of pages, you're thinking, Oh, God, it's bleeding through. And that's why I would recommend that you go for a mid tier book. So maybe an art store's own brand like this that's available. This is Sea white, as I mentioned before. This is really my go to that I use on a daily basis. I also use the Midori ones, these ones over here. So, again, I use both sizes, but again, this one is an expensive option, so maybe not jump in to that one straightaway. This one is a good option. The rodeo, the small one, this is really cheap to buy. So it's something that you can kind of test around in the challenge when you go ahead and do it and remember the challenge isn't just going to stop there. Once you've done this challenge, this will hopefully build that momentum so that you can continue doing this on a regular basis and then maybe test out some other books, and there'll be a book that you really like that suits your style and movement, so you'll be able to select that book going forward. That was it on the sketchbooks grab yourself a nice, good, decent sketchbook that's not bigger than an A six. Go as small as you want, as tiny as you want. It's up to you for your seven day challenge. Let's now move on to the next supply, which, again, is as important as the sketchbook, and that is your drawing and writing instrument. So let's move on to that one next. 5. Writing Tools: Okeydoke, welcome back. So let's now have a look at our lovely writing tools that we can use for our pocket pages challenge. So on the screen over here, I've got my typical tools that I use on a daily basis for not just my pocket pages, but I use this for my general sketchbooks. And you can see that they are fairly small in comparison to just standard pen. So if I bring that rodeo book that we looked at in the previous lesson, you can see if I put that next to it and I put the mini book that I've got. So that little teeny weenie book that I've got down here, you can see that a lot of these pens are mini pens. They're very portable, and I've been using these for quite a while. Apart from this middle one, which I've just recently got, I've just testing it out, but I thought I'll show you this as an option. Let's have a look at the one on the left as the cheapest option. So they're going up in terms of price. Again, you don't need to buy an expensive pen just use whichever pen you have that's around. So you can even use just a standard micron marker if you've got that lying around. You can see as a comparison, if I put the micron over here, you've got quite a bit of a difference between these tiny pens over here, but it doesn't really matter that much. As long as you can fit your pen in your pocket, then that's all you need. And my kind of bigger pens that I have my fountain pens like my ami Safari, which is my main go to pen that I use for all of my artwork. That again, is solid enough to put in my pocket. But for this particular challenge, I like to keep everything compact, so I like to have smaller pens that I've got. So let's move the big ones out of the way for now, and let's start on with the left. So this one on the left, this is just a cheap, standard big pen, which has the multi kind of colors on the ends that come out like this. Fantastic little pen to use for your pocket journals because it just kind of fits in your pocket, doesn't it? And if you have a small kind of wallet or a purse, this will easily fit in, and you won't have to worry about this kind of, you know, breaking because it's fairly cheap and you can replace it quite easily. And the advantage of this is you've got four beautiful colors to do in your pocket journals with one pen. So that's a great example that big multi pen. And again, this is the small version. You can get the full version as well. All of the kind of links that I've used to get these are going to be in the resource sheet, so do check that out. So that's the cheapest option out of all of these. Then I've got my daily driver, what I call on my desk, my Coco sport, BwpointPen. So this is my pen that I use for everything in terms of technical writing, note taking, my work, my graphic design work. Just my daily Jota pen. Ballpoint works really nice, and it's just so versatile and mobile, a nice clicky click button, and it has these refillable refills in them, the metal refill bow points. So you can buy them as replacements. So you only have to buy one pen. I highly recommend this pen. I think it's absolutely fantastic. It is a thick barrel. So if you're not used to using thick pens, then maybe don't go for something like this. But if it's something that you don't mind, then I would say that this is a fantastic little pen, so just put that one back. This one is fairly expensive. I think you can get these for around about 20 pounds, and the refills come in packs. So, generally speaking, it's not too bad. The big pen, I think this was only a few pounds, maybe about two pounds, something like that, two pounds or three pounds maximum. So that's your cheapest option, and your next option is this one that I use. So these two, again, are Bopoint pens. And then this one is a newish pen that I've got. I've only recently got it. This is by J Herbin, and this is actually quite an interesting pen. It's a Bwpoint pen. But you have cartridges in it, so it's like a fountain pen where you can go ahead and just buy the cartridges to refill. And I found this quite intriguing and interesting because I've never really used a cartridge system on a ballpoint pen before. I don't know you might have this pen, but generally speaking, it was a really interesting pen, and it's quite solid as well. Nice metal kind of body on it, and a nice feel. I really enjoy the size of it. I think the size of it is just fantastic, good amount of weight to it. But this pen doesn't really work on all surfaces for some reason. So on Midori paper, like this paper over here, that expensive paper that I've got, this mini book, I tried using it over here, and it just wouldn't flow. The ink wouldn't flow. This type of paper has a special coating on it, like vellum paper, which works with really kind of, like, juicy flowy pens, if that's a terms fountain pens and pens that have a decent amount of flow of ink. This I found didn't really work great on high quality paper. In fact, worked better on the lower quality paper that has a bit of a tooth and grip to it. So, again, if you've got this pen, then that's great. I just wanted to kind of share that with you. Really nice looking pen, but unfortunately, it doesn't work on everything. And then my lovely go to Coco Sport fountain pen. You've seen me use this pen. This pen featured highly on my fountain pens class. And I use this pen all the time with the beautiful swirl opening mechanism in it. And look at that gorgeous gold nib on that fountain pen. Beautiful stuff my go to on this. But generally, I don't really use this for my pocket pages because I don't kind of like to throw this pen around because it's quite an expensive pen, and I don't like to kind of have to keep changing the cartridges in it because the ink does run out fairly quickly because it has this converter that I'll quickly show you doesn't hold much ink the nib on this I've got is a double broad nib, so probably not the best nib for pocket pages. But again, if you have one of these and you have a thin nib on it like a fine nib or maybe a medium nib, then it might be a great option. But do you remember when you're using fountain pens, ensure that you've got the right pocket pages because you don't want that bleed through or the kind of smudgy smudgy going on? Because you're only going to be spending five or 10 minutes doing these pocket pages, and you want to ensure that your medium works on the paper that you have. Let's now look at probably the pen that I use 99% of the time on all my pocket pages, and that is my beautiful Lumos pens. I like them so much. I've got two of them. So I've got these beautiful Lumos pens over here. I'll just quickly show you these. These are what's going to feature in my seven day challenge videos that you're going to be watching later on. So these are beautiful, refillable, fine liner pens with various tip sizes. I usually use the not 0.3 or the 0.1 or not 0.2. I can't remember which one it is. On both of these all the time, they have a refillable system where you just buy bottled ink, and you can just refill them as they go out. Got a gorgeous metal body. They're sturdy, they're solid, and the ink flow is just fantastic. I love this pen. However, it's probably the most expensive pen out of this mini collection that I have. It cost around about 45 pounds, which is a lot of money, and then you need to buy the kind of replacement kind of cartridge system things that you have that are made of cotton. So it can be a big investment. If it's something that you're going to be using on a daily basis like me, then I think it's absolutely worth it. And if you've got one of these, then fantastic. Get it all inked up and ready for your pocket pages challenge. So that was the kind of pens that I use for my pocket pages. I just wanted to kind of show you that having a nice small pen will really be beneficial for this challenge. Purely because it's more portable. But if you don't have a small pen like this, you don't need to go ahead and buy yourself some special pen just for this challenge. Just use whichever pen you have. You have a fine liner lying around, or even abnormal Bwpoint big pen that will do. A pen will do just ensure that your paper that you have, the actual book that you're using for your pocket pages is suitable for the pen and medium that you're using. You don't have any bleedybleed pages or any kind of mess up on your spreads because we don't want to get or frustrated with this challenge because the challenge is about relaxing and enjoying moment and really getting those beautiful moments and capturing those ten minute sessions in your day to day routine and life. So that's it for the mediums, simple and easy. So let's now move on to an extra supply that is totally optional that I use, that you're going to see me using. So I thought, let's just quickly go through that extra supply that I use in my pocket pages. So let's quickly move on to that one next. 6. Wallets & Carry Cases: Ah, nice bit of ginger that. Oh, I needed that one. I've been talking so much. Needed to get on with some pocket journaling. Um, yeah, I think I think next, let's talk about the beautiful wallets that I've designed. So let's move on to maybe that one next. Let's just put the tea on the side. That was a really nice tea. Oh, are we recording? Oh, oh, oh, hello and welcome back. Okay, so I was just having a nice little break then, having a nice bit of ginger, contemplating a bit of next kind of thing to talk about. So get straight into it. As we mentioned, we went through our sketchbooks that we're going to have as an option, our mediums, our pens as an option, and that's it. That's all you needed for this class. This next thing that I've got is actually something that helps me to carry my pocket pages with me wherever I go, my pen and my notebook, my small mini notebook. And if you have something like this, then great. But if you haven't don't worry about it. You don't need to go out and buy anything or make anything like I have. You just need to kind of have something to carry it. The whole point of this challenge is to have something that's portable that you can actually put in your pocket or your purse or your wallet. So they quickly go through what I do. You can see on the screen over here, I've got myself some really nice wallets, and you're think oh. Is that all he does? Does he just buy wallets all day long? Well, you're wrong there. The second part might be right of having loads of wallets because I actually make them. So I took it on myself last year to start designing with real materials. So I was using real leather and learning the craft of leather craft, craftsmanship and just coming up with my own designs for this kind of challenge and to really help myself keep something with me all the time, having a pen, having some paper, having just a little sketchbook. I found that couldn't find really anything on the market that would suit what I wanted it to fit into. And the wallets that I had, they just weren't right. They just fit credit cards on them and just a little bit of change. My pen wouldn't fit in them properly. So I thought, you know what? Let's just go ahead and design it. Might as well design it, put my creative kind of workflow towards a goal of kind of improving my well being. And I tell you what, I absolutely loved it. I made loads and loads of mistakes like beginners usually do. And I'm still an absolute novice at this, but I managed to create quite a few little examples and actually started using them. So I was quite happy with myself on that front. So let's just quickly go through some of these. This was probably venture that took me about maybe six months to do, and I did waste a lot of money buying the wrong tools and the wrong product. But again, it's all about learning it's not about the end goal and achieving things straightaway. It's about that journey and learning and enjoying yourself. If it's something you're interested in, then do let me know. I might even do a class on how to make these things one day. But for now, let's concentrate on pocket pages. Over here, let's show you an example. This one, this lovely green one that I've got. It's actually my main one that I use. I designed this so that I have a nice little wallet to have my pen in. I've got my lovely pen that fits in nicely over there, super simple, super easy and portable. And then my lovely little pocket pages, which I've completed, and you will see some of these in the next set of videos. Yes, you will. So a lot of these were completed on site. So wherever I was in the situation that I was in completed all within this nice little carry case that I have in my pocket all the time. And that's what the purpose of it was. I created a couple of flaps there to maybe put some receipts and notes in or some extra pieces of paper, and this just worked an absolute treat. So that was kind of my main wallets that I did with this beautiful real green leather. And then, again, another one, similar design. Once you get started in something, then you start enjoying it, don't you? So, over here again, I've got my other pen, my lovely Tom studio pen over there. And then, again, that same size notebook. So if you remember, I went through the notebooks before, this is the kind of pocket version of my ASIx that I cut down. And this, again, is my go to now going forward for pocket pages. So I curved the corners with my corner cutter, and this one is one that I'm currently working on. So I've got some pages here. You can see I've got some lines drawn in on one side of the page, and then I've got the other side ready for the doodles. We'll come to the layout and composition later on. But yeah, so it works really nice, so easy to carry, nice and durable. And then I've also got this one over here that I designed as kind of like a loop that goes on the side. But I didn't really kind of like this because I didn't like this elastic. But then again, I've designed it now, so I will use it. So again, I've got another one of the Tom Studio pens. This is actually one half of the bigger pen, so I kind of use all of them. Always use your supplies as much as you can so that you don't have wastage. So this one is actually housing my A seven Midori books. You can see that nice cute little book in there. With the lined paper on it in this lovely little kind of wallet design that I came up with. So this one works really nice, nice and portable. I'll leave the pen on the side. And then I've got a couple of these double style per style wallets that I've got over here, so I'll just quickly show you these. Again, I've got my portable book there that I've cut down, that sea white book. I've got a couple of extra cards in these Wallach, side card holders that I made, and then I've got the JHbin pen in there, which I haven't actually used yet. This one I'll use once I've finished one of the pocket pages in the other journals. The real point of having so many of these really is because I was testing the design of them. I thought I might as well have a pen and a book in each one of them ready so that when one is finished, I can move on to the next one without having to start again and it just works great. This one over here, again, this is a bigger version and it has the same paper, that sea white paper that I've cut down to the pocket page size, and I just keep myself a nice little fine liner in there, a few more kind of slots to put some cards or paper if I've run out of pages over here, and it works really good. And this one also has a zip like the others, and the zips do work for some change to maybe buy some more pens or papers. If I'm at the art store, wherever it may be, it just works great as a portable tool. So that was that one there. And then these were really for the smaller books, the kind of a seven and the pocket page size books. I've also made journal covers for the A 61. So over here, I'll show you here. I've got this one over here, which is one for the full sized version of my sketchbook. So this basically has one of the C Y A six size ones in them. And I just attach a pen like this, my fountain pen, and that works as a nice little kind of portable ASIx wallet to take around with me, maybe to put in my bag. And then over here, I've done another one. And this one, I've got my lovely little stencil in it so I can draw in the lines whenever I need to. And this is for the ASIx Midori paper, fantastic paper that. This actually use a bit more for my sketchbook journaling rather than pocket pages because I like to add a bit more detail like this around it. But again, if you're using ASIx size books, then go ahead and use whichever ones you like. Then finally, this one over here is an ASIx size book. This is actually a watercolor book that I've got for maybe my everyday pages, but I just want it to keep it portable in something that's nice and handy so I can carry it with me wherever I go. So that's it then for the kind of carry case for your pocket pages. Again, you don't need to have so many like I have. I've only got this many because I started this leathercraft journey, and I started making product, making mistakes, and then improving it on the next one, and at the end of it, after that kind of six month period, ended up having loads of these little pocket page wallets and I'm going to make use of them. If it's something you want to learn how to make, then absolutely leave me a comment and if I get time, maybe towards the end of this year, I might start creating some classes on how to make these type of product using leathercraft. But again, I'm not a professional in this. I'm an absolute beginner, an absolute novice. I design things for my own purpose. So it helps me in my day to day well being by incorporating a daily sketching habit. So that's it for the class supplies. We are now ready. We've talked about why portable is good. We've talked about the class supplies that you need to get started. So what you waiting for we'll just sit back, relax, watch the next couple of lessons, and then the excited stuff is going to start because then you're going to watch me use, this particular book over here and this wallet and this pen, where I went on my seven day challenge to just build it into my routine. And I had a lot of fun doing that. So I know you're really excited for that, but just grab yourself a nice drink, sit back, relax, watch the rest of the lessons before you get to that, and then I'll see you on the next one. 7. Layouts & Composition: Hello and welcome back. Let's now talk about the layout and composition of your pages for your pocket pages challenge. If you've watched the everyday pages class or the sketchbook journaling class and you had to look at the resource sheet that I attached with those classes, you would have seen the lovely resource sheet with all the various layout compositions that I had as an illustration for you to follow, use, and get inspired from. I will also attach those resources with this class so that you can have a look at it if you can't find it just to review but the principle generally is for pocket pages, we don't want to be spending too much time thinking about the layout and composition of our pages because it's all about quickly setting up and getting on with that five, 10 minutes session, wherever you are, fitting it into your day so you don't want to have too many prerequisite issues and steps that you want to take. We just want to get started quickly. So I would recommend that you keep your composition simple. For my pocket pages, I just stick to the standard layout and composition of having a drawing on one page and the writing on the other side of the page, so I have a complete spread. And that's what I'm encouraging you to do for this challenge, have a complete spread every day. So it's effectively one full page, divided into two. Writing on one side and drawings and doodles on the other, you can vary it for the seven day challenge if you want to swap around the writing or the doodles on either side of the spread, or if you just want to do a kind of random style, which again, was in the compositions sheets as an option where you just have the doodle done and you have your writing around the doodle wrapped around nice and neatly. I sometimes do this for my pocket pages and specifically mainly from my sketchbook journaling. But again, you don't want to be thinking about that. I don't want you to start thinking about the layout and composition. I just want you to open up your pocket pages and just start. So keep it nice and simple for the seven day challenge. And then when you continue doing this into your habit of daily sketching, then have a play around with the compositions when you have time to just make things a bit more interesting. But generally, let's go with simples going forward. So that's it on the screen, you can see all the various compositions, but the ones that I'm recommending are where we have the writing on either side and the drawings on the other side. So that's it for the composition and the layouts of your pocket pages. And now we can move on to the super exciting stuff and start talking about my seven day challenge. So let's move on to that one next. 8. 7-Day Challenge: Oki Doke welcome back. It is time now to watch me complete the seven day pocket pages challenge. And what I've done is I've actually done this over a period of seven to eight days where I was actually not in a standard week of my life. It was actually in the festive holidays. So I wasn't working at my day job as a graphic designer because I had my annual leave booked for that entire week. And I just thought that it's a nice, kind of, exciting time to do my pocket journaling and to actually film them for this class. So I went ahead and did this on the seven days at different times and different moments, even added in a couple of little trips here and there, but I'm not going to spoil it for you. I'm going to let you enjoy it. You'll see a lot of my kind of lifestyle. You might even see some of my little family members coming along the way. So that's nice and exciting and a bit of a change and refresher from the usual. So I want you to just watch these videos. They're only 2 minutes, maximum about 2 minutes each, sit back, get yourself a nice drink, just relax and get comfy, maybe put it on the big telly. There's some nice soundtracks in the background. There's no talking. It's just watching and with a nice funky little soundtrack in the back, just to give you this inspiration and boost to really bring in this pocket pages habit into your life. Again, this was not a typical week in my life. It would be a lot easier to do the pocket pages in my general day to day life when I'm working because you get the time when you're making a tea, making a coffee, going to drop the kids in the morning, doing it in the car. This is what I've regularly been doing myself. But just to make things interesting, I thought I'll just record it in a more exciting environment so that you can enjoy it. Watch the next seven videos, relax, sit back and once you've watched them and enjoyed them, then we'll get together again for some inspiration. Well, I'll quickly flip through some of the pages that I've done in those videos and some additional ones for you to get inspired. So get that tea ready, coffee ready, hot chocolate ready, and get your treat nice and ready, sit on your nice comfy couch and start watching them videos now. So I'll see you once that done. 9. Day 1: Mmm. 10. Day 2: [No Speech] 11. Day 3: [No Speech] 12. Day 4: [No Speech] 13. Day 5: [No Speech] 14. Day 6: [No Speech] 15. Day 7: [No Speech] 16. Inspiration: Okay, welcome back. You've now watched my seven days Pocket Pages challenge, and I told you that you might get to see some exclusive family members, little tiny family members running around, and you did, and you saw me going to different places, and it was just so much fun. And what I wanted to really show you was that if you have something portable as pocket pages, especially in a wallet or in your pocket, it's so easy to just open them start writing. I was obviously recording everything that I was doing, so it took me a lot longer, but generally speaking, it doesn't take me more than six or 8 minutes to complete a quick little spread, sometimes if I have more time, for example, if I'm in the coffee shop or if I'm just at work, my lunch break, I might spend maybe ten to 15 minutes on it, but that's not what we're here for. We want to just do a quick session where you don't have to think too much. It's just about getting your thoughts down onto that paper, doing a quick little doodle of your surroundings, and it just warms you up into this habit that I'm promoting to ensure that you keep on top of your well being by using this vehicle of art and this traditional manual designing to really keep that calm and relaxation going in your life. I hope you enjoyed those videos. I certainly enjoyed making them, especially going on my trip to Bradford. I thought that's a perfect opportunity in the festive season to really show you that you can go anywhere and take your pocket pages with you. You take that opportunity that you get that quick little pocket of time. Of 5 minutes, 10 minutes just to get them out and start your drawing and doodling, nice and quickly, nice and easily. And then you have that sense of achievement that you've done something in the day, whereas with the everyday pages and sketchbook journaling, you need a little bit more specific time to do it and maybe a specific place. So this is an absolute absolute gem of a practice to do, and I hope this has inspired you to really get going with this challenge. So for a bit more inspiration, I'm just going to go through some of the pages that I've done so far in my pocket pages. I've actually got a lot more than these because I've been doing this for a while now, but I don't want to bore you with every single page that I've done. I'll just stick to the ones that I did in the video in my wallet. So on the screen over here, we've got my lovely green wallet that I designed, and this is probably my favorite one. It's the most portable the zip on it works great. A couple of pound in there to maybe buy a couple of pencils or maybe a couple of treats while I'm doing my pocket pages, and this one has just worked great. This is actually the ticket that I bought when I went to Bradford for the stay, it cost me three pound 50, so I had the change in there and I got my tickets. So that was nice. Let's just put that on the side. And let's go quickly flick through this lovely little book which I've actually completed. Now the last one I did was actually in Bradford on day two. So let's quickly go through this. So I started off my pocket pages just with some writing on the first page. I didn't do any doodles. And then the next day, we were at probably some kind of cake place. No, this was actually at a cake store, my wife's cake store. So I got a nice little pocket pages done on that day. And then I'm just going to quickly flick through this again at another coffee shop over here. And then, again, I spend a lot of my time in coffee shops, as you know, because I'm just absolutely bonkers about coffee coffee and art. You can't get better than that, so quick little flick through again. On this one, I didn't spend too much time. You can see there's not too much details on this. And then, again, this one, I can't remember where this one was. I think this one was at Cafe Nero on our regular Thursdays, where me and wife go do the grocery shop and I just do my pocket pages then. And then here a little bit more. This was just at home, actually, when I was having a break after work. So a nice little tea, and again, a cake, of course. I do need to cut down on them cakes, maybe go a little bit healthy, maybe have some fruit in it. I think I'll do that as a New Year's resolution, maybe have tea coffee and a piece of fruit instead of all this sugary stuff. Little bit of sugar won't harm you. But every day, it's not good. No, it isn't let's continue. Again, this is probably at another coffee shop. Oh, this was when I was picking up me daughter from her work experience in town. So I was just waiting in the coffee shop for her. So I got a takeaway cup, and you can see a little tram there. Only took me 5 minutes to do that. And that's what it's all about. So again, over here, a bit more scribbly job down here. I think this was where we went out to the actual festive fair in town with the family. And I think I just drew this outside on a stool and did some quick little writings over there. And again, nice little drawing here, nice and compact, not too precious about making the lines perfect or, you know, having shading or even if it makes sense, it was just about getting everything down. And just again, we've got muffins and coffee as usual. And then here we were at crispy cream doughnut with the kids. And this was actually part of the video, wasn't it? So this was one of the videos that you just watched. And again, this was when we were at the park. So that, again, was one of the days on the videos that you watched. And this was another day on the video where we were going on our family meal, which was rather nice. There was quite a lot of us, quite a lot of family members together. They were having cocktails and all that type of stuff. I just kept it simple and just had a nice mango lassie, if you've ever tried that. Very nice indeed. So we've got over here was, I think what was this? This was Bradford, wasn't it? Yes. As soon as we went to Bradford, we went to Caffe Nero. We needed a drink, and I took that opportunity to quickly do some videos with the family, had a nice coffee, tasted absolutely fantastic. And then this one was At? What was this at? So this was a morning breakfast, yes. So this was my morning breakfast at the hotel, and it was just fantastic. And you've watched the video on that. And then at the end over here, I only had one page left. So this was where we went to that really, really nice cafe that we found. I think it was called Jamaican Blue. Absolute beautiful cafe. Their food and pastries was just Wow. So really enjoyed that, and that was kind of the last page that I had in this journal. So that's really it. I'll just quickly flick through the ones that I've got over here. So in this one, I think this is just a continuation. Again, this is my wallet journal, same book again that I use all the time. Kind of shortened cut down version to the pocket size of the C white ASIxPages booklet. Again, nice bit of doodles going on over there. The theme usually is for me. When I do have a tea or a drink or when I go out, I try to do a quick little sketch. And again, on this one, there's quite a lot of detail on this one. This was actually done at home, this one, a lot of detail. I probably spent a bit too much time on this, made this into one of my sketchbook journal pages, but that's absolutely fine. If you have the time, go ahead and add some details. It looks quite nice, actually. This one turned out. I might have to color that one in. So let's have a look at this. This was actually in Traffic Center when I was waiting in the car. So I drew this in the car, I wrote this in the car, and that's the ideal situation. When you're driving around in your day to day life, doing your day to day things, having this in your pocket just gives you that opportunity and window to just do that nice, relaxing bit of creativity to give you that calm, mindfulness, and to really improve on your well being. And it's just so much fun to do. So that was in the car, and this one over here, this was just at home with one of my other pens. I think it was that JHbin pen in the blue ink. Blue ink does look rather nice, and that's it. So this is the one that I'm going to continue doing now. This is going to be my continuation of my pocket pages. Just move that one to the side. This one over here, let's see what we have in this. This is a new one. I've actually started this. So over here, I've got the lovely little muffin and tea or whatever me and my wife are having. I think I only did this just yesterday, I think, yes, it was yesterday from the day of filming this. So this is just the first page in it. And again, I haven't really started this properly yet. So I like to have a couple of these going at the same time, so maybe have one in my jacket pocket with me all the time. And then I just have one at home that I can work on, so I don't have to kind of move one in a different place just in case I forget to take it out. So that this one is the other one that I've got going. You've seen this, I think in the previous video. Move the pen on that one. Yes. This is my Midori book. I really love this book. This one just did a quick little doodle and this was all done, I think with my lovely fine liner over here. I have tried the fountain pen in this as well. Over here, I think I did fountain pen on this page. Again, this layout is just a nice bit of writing and then just a bit of a drawing doodle on the bottom. Do it as you like. If you have time to do the doodles, do the doodles. If you don't have time, just do writing or do it the other way around where you're just doing doodles first, and then a bit of writing. It's entirely up to you, whatever works best for your situation. And again, this was where I tried out that J HebinPen and it didn't really work. But I did continue doing it. Don't get disappointed if your medium doesn't work or, you know, if your page doesn't turn out how it's supposed to. Remember, it's not everyday pages. We'll be designing lovely pages. It's just this pocket journal exercise to get it all down. And I think that was the last one on that page. So again, I've got three of these working at the same time. These are my kind of three current ones that I'm working with. One for my jacket pocket. And this one tends to be at home. So whenever I have the opportunity to do it at home, and again, this one is another one that I'll have probably in another jacket pocket that I have, depending on the weather. So that's it for the inspiration of what I've done. I've been doing this for a long time. I've got quite a lot of other books as well, but I don't want to sit here all day going through the pages of what I've done. I want you to start now. You're inspired. Watch the videos, you watch the class lessons, and now you're ready to get your lovely pocket page materials out and start this adventure, and I can't wait to see what you produce. So do give this a go, and let's now finish the class off with some final thoughts. 17. Final Thoughts: Oki doke, welcome back. I hope you enjoyed that little adventure with me of pocket pages. In my seven day challenge that I took, I really enjoyed the entire process, and it really kind of highlighted to myself that this is such a great idea. So portable can take it anywhere with me whenever I need. And those moments that you get where you don't have anything to do and you're just waiting, you can just pull out your pocket pages, start doing a little bit of doodle. Thought writing, get some goals down. You doesn't have to be doing writing sophisticated poetry or anything like that. Just get your goals down, what your thoughts are, how you're feeling, what you need to do tomorrow, or what you've accomplished today. Such a great way to release that kind of mental tension onto just a small little piece of paper so that you're nice and warmed up. And then when you come home, you can start looking at things, replanning, redesigning, and then you can start focusing on your sketchbook journaling, building this momentum into your bigger sketchbooks. And that's what it's all about. Building that habit, improving your mental well being and using art and this lovely creative tool of traditional mediums to really help this journey in life and to continually work on yourself to improve your life and to really explore this wonderful world. Art. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for your support over these beautiful years that we've done on this channel. And hopefully, this has inspired you and motivated you to do the challenge. I highly recommend this challenge. Even if it's something that you've never done before or you think, Oh, I'm already doing a lot of other things. This will really fit in into your daily routine because it's a companion that will go with you wherever you are. So do try the challenge. Remember to take pictures of all the beautiful works that you've done. You don't need to show pictures of the personal writings that you have in your journal. That's absolutely fine. Just show the doodles and cover up the writings and post it on the class Project Gallery so that we can all see how this challenge has motivated you and helped you. And this will inspire us all to continue with this habit of daily art and sketchbook journaling and just generally improving our well being. And don't forget to leave a review on the class once you've completed everything and upload it to the class project gallery, so other fantastic students like yourself can view, see the class, and join in and join in on your beautiful experience so we can all learn from each other. So that's it for now. Let's carry on, enjoy, get that pocket pages ready, get your pen ready, all link to. Put it in your wallet, put it in your bag, and the next time you go out, make sure that you start doing your pocket pages, journaling and sketching. Thank you for everything that you've done. Thank you for all the beautiful reviews that you've left me, and thank you for all your help and support. Take care of yourself. Don't stress. Enjoy, take a deep breath, and I'll see you on the next one. Peace.