I had so much fun with this.

These books are made with mostly recycled and repurposed materials! The stitches are rough but with practice I'll be able to make them prettier. I found an old sketchbook unexpectedly; it was covered with streaks and coffee stains. I have no idea why. It was a good candidate for a very first book, because it was not precious to me. For both books, the covers are wrapped with sketchbook pages.

I plan to use these books to sketch, collage, and collect.  

These books already took their maiden voyage, as you'll see the "ten minute" exercise and some of my regular figure sketching. 

The little black book's inner cover is corrugated cardboard and that didn't work well; if you use that you need to reinforce the holes otherwise your needle will get lost in the inner ridges of the cardboard. But ... I coated the outside (another sketchbook page) with india ink and polished it lightly with a paper towel. It made the book look like it is shiny and lacquered, but it also reveals some of the shadow of the corrugated texture.