When I bought this "Soho Urban Artist" sketch book (11" x 14") I didn't realize that the paper would be like the "construction" paper that we used withcrayons in grade school. I had recently given away a huge tin of my daughter's crayons (post college) and it was kind of hard to let go of them (for me - no her). The smell of crayons still gets to me (in a good way) so I decided to just go with it and I bought a box of 24 crayons, plus the "Kindness" set, reinforced the sketchbook with duct tape (because the binding quickly broke), and now I have a really un-precious sketchbook to play in.