Tonight I got into a mood to watch a few YouTube videos on making altered art journals! This looks like a great time to me! Anyway...one of the videos I came across was a man and his son making a sketchbook using cereal box (for the cover), and brown paper bag (for the inside sheets of paper). I was inspired to try making a book I can keep in my purse, for my daughter to use in the car or at dinner (she loves to sketch while waiting in restaurants).
I had just taken a beer box out to throw away earlier today, but I didn't have the heart to pitch it because I found many things about the box attractive...like the silver sheen, a green leaf, and the way the word MANGO was printed on it in mango-y color! Anyway...I got the beer box and cut the two sides off for my front and back covers.
I cut the paper bag pages into 5 x 14 inches, so when folded in half longways they would be 5 x 7, which was the perfect size to fit inside the beer box covers! I made 2 signatures of 3 sheet of the paper each, and I punched holes in both signatures and the covers all matched up perfectly. I tied the book together with 2 black and 1 ivory colored ribbons I had in my junk drawer! I left them loose enough so that when the book is opened it can lay perfectly flat, for sketching! Then I cut peices of patterend paper for the inside of the covers.
As you can see, some of the paper has art work from Whole Foods Market on it, but I thought it was pretty, and it is a recycled project which makes it ultra groovy as well!
Here are two pages that are completely empty to sketch on...notice the nice way it lays so flatly...yippee!!! The way I did that was to tie the ribbons with the book laying flat open...that way you know there is enough leeway.
I did some decoupage on the front cover to make it pretty. I left the back cover just as itself...a beer box! I think I will cover the front with high gloss varnish in the morning to protect the papers I put on there. Of course, I am always up for a little more gloss...it is a weakness of mine!!! I hope you like my first try at a little recycled sketchbook...just for fun. The whole thing only took about 30 minutes at most. The only thing I would do differently would be to use at least 2 more signatures in it. I kinda like fatter sketchbooks. Hey...next time!
Now I can go to bed...I think. I still feel wide awake...yikes!
I found these in the full color photo section of the Natural Insect and Disease Control book my SIL gave me, and except for the gross sliminess that you can't see here, I used Sharpie, and my watercolor pencils, and a few other misc. things laying around here to make them. I think I will paint them with clear shiny fingernail polish now so they can look true to themselves!!! Nasty!
