Old Book Sketchbook - Part 2

Part 2 - Covering the Book Covers

aaaand we're back in 3, 2, 1...

Hellooo! Now that you have all of your supplies together, signatures made and your book gutted like a turkey on Thanksgiving we are ready to cover our book. 

As you saw in Part One, I have a big box of fabric that I bought at a garage sale for $4. I chose a fabric that I liked for the cover and I covered it. 

So for this part of the project you're going to need the following supplies:

• Fabric of your choosing 
• You'll need to choose a fabric for you outside covers and your inside cover (which will be in the next part of the video)
• You will want to cut your fabric like this:
• Length of the book + 2 inches (for a 1 inch border on the inside. 1 inch for each side)
• Width of the book + 2 inches (same as above)
• Glue of your choice
• I use Aleene's Fabric Fusion Glue (Note: This stuff smells to the high heavens).
• Bone Folder
• This is just to crease the spine and allow you to have unsticky fingers when putting down your glue. 

Before I get to the video, I want to add some tips for you: 

1. Please please pleaseee USE WHAT IS ON HAND. Do not go buy things just to do this project. If all you have is paper, you can do the same. exact. thing. Promise!
   
2. You will want to take the top sheet of paper and use it as a template. DO NOT flip your template or your signatures will not be the same and therefore your spine will be off as well when you bind it.
   
3. I learned the "Don't cut the edges and then put them into signatures" thing as I was doing this. Oh the beauty of learning as you go. :)
   
4. When folding the fabric over, do the short sides of the book first and then do the long sides. It'll give you a cleaner edge in the end. 

Here is the video and I hope you enjoy. As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to comment below or on the video!

Old Book Sketchbook - Part 1

Over the next week or so, I'll be putting together and series of videos showing you how to make your own sketchbook out of an old book. This first part will cover the materials you need to do this project and how to prepare your book for altering.

As I made the video it didn't cross my mind to take stills of what I was doing for the blog. I need to be better about that. But before I get to the video, I'm going to show you what's in the tool kit (I tell you about it in the video) that I have. It was a Recollections brand tool kit that I got from Michael's on sale and I ended up not using half the things that were in there so I put the stuff that I use the most in there. So here you go!

Part One: Supplies and Prep

From Left to Right: Plastic palette knife, bone folder, needles, extra Xacto blades, white Sharpie pen, my old Xacto knife, an awl and my new Xacto knife. 

The Supplies listed (without interruptions in the video) are the following:

• An old book. Pick any size that you want. If you like small sketchbooks, buy a smaller book, if you like big books, buy a bigger book. It does not have to have sewn signatures (other artist's say that it MUST have it. I call bull!). Pick the book you like. (Note: The one thing you will want to keep in mind is the size of the spine. Mine is about 1 1/2 inches). 
• Paper of your choice. For my book I am using Bristol paper. It's 100 lb paper and it's made by Strathmore. 
• Paper trimmer. 
• A ruler. 
• An awl. (see above photo) to make your holes with
• bone folder (see above)
• fabric of your choice to cover the old books
• Thread (again, personal preference. I just used regular sewing thread. Nylon thread is another option. Whatever's in your budget!)
• Needle to sew with.

Okay. So here's the video! Have fun with it and leave your questions and comments!

Update and an Introduction!

HELLO!!!

First I want to start off by saying that I'm sorry that it has been such a long time since I had a post. There's been a lot of madness going on in my life. In March, I went through a very bad Depression spell. I could barely bring myself to get out of bed in the mornings for class. Then I got the flu (which made everything worse) and I ended up missing work for 2 full weeks. Then finals in school came along, I moved into my first apartment with my boyfriend and my roommate from the dorms and now I'm finally back to feeling a little more like myself and ready to get back to creating and making things to share with you all!

So I have a new series of videos that I'm going to make for you on how to make your own sketchbook out of an old book and a pad of paper.

I have part one all ready to go and I'll have it posted ASAP and the other parts will come along within the week!

Thanks for your patience and love,

Sarah