I posted about my Inktober conquest. I decided I’m going to keep my mini-art habit going. I enjoy the challenge, and I am really pleased with all of my drawings. I used to judge any art I made so harshly. If it wasn’t “good” I didn’t even want to try to make it. I still wouldn’t consider most of my Inktober drawings to be “good.” But I will say compared to not-to-long ago that they are better and getting better all the time.
Practice makes good enough.
Since I’m continuing the daily art practice, I thought it might be nice to have a good sketchbook to go into 2020. (I’m going to keep using the one I have through 2019.)
So I decided to make one. This Instructable tutorial was immensely useful to me. My blog post isn’t meant to be a complete tutorial. More it’s a record and sharing of my victories and mistakes…
I already had some 70# sketch/art paper, so I tore it out of the notebook it was in. I folded up the pages into “signatures” in the bookbinding lingo. Six sections with 8 pages in each. This makes each signature have 32 pages.
I used a drill to put the holes in. (Make sure to make an even number of holes. It complicates things if you don’t. Guess how many I had?)
Then you sew the signatures together into a ‘textblock.’ I made my odd number of holes work, but it definitely would have been easier with an even number. I got a little confused during the tutorial on how to sew them together, so this video tutorial helped me figure that out.
After the textblock is done, you glue the textblock onto your cover fabric so that you can more easily glue it into the whole book later. I got the fabric for $1.50 at Michaels.
While that was drying, I started to cut my chipboard down to size. This was probably the hardest part for me. That stuff cuts really hard! I was using a utility knife with a razor blade and had to go over the line a bunch to get it to cut.
Once I got the chipboard cut, I cut some thick paper down and glued it to the chipboard. Then I put a thin layer of glue on the paper and stuck the paper/chipboard to the cover fabric. I read that the paper would help to make sure there were no wrinkles from the glue. It seems to have worked. I did the same for the other side and the spine.
Once the cover was set up, I folded the fabric into the middle and glued it down there. Then the textblock got glued in.
After that, I took scrapbook paper with stairs as a design, folded it, and put it in to cover the inside fabric. I put some of that thick paper in the middle of the paper when I glued it in, which seemed to help keep the paper from getting wrinkly.
You can tell from the above picture the binding is too wide. When I read the instructions I thought it said to cut it a couple of inches extra from the edge when that’s not what it said at all. Still, the book as a whole looks nice. No real wrinkles. The pages turn nicely. And I’ll have a ton of space for a lot of art in there! And since the pages are multimedia I can expand the art to watercolors and more!
I may put some art or faux calligraphy on the front cover, but I’m not sure yet. I kind of like it as it is.
This is the first time I’ve made a fully bound book. Once upon a time, I made a book with a more simple cover. But that was a long time ago.
Overall I’m really pleased with this. I made a book!!