EMBELLISHED SKETCHBOOK
To go with the Box of Delights that I made for my friend Caroline on the ArtKula forum, I made a small sketchbook.
I have a few sheets left from an A3 pad of Daler Rowney hot-pressed watercolour paper. This is pretty heavy-weight and I’ve been using it for my detailed Islamic art work. I sprayed a couple of sheets with tea, and while still wet, sprinkled on some instant coffee grounds. I sprayed more tea, and then blotted them off so that they left more subtle “foxing” marks such as you’d find on ancient papers.
I cut these two sheets down to 12 x 9 inches and then halved them again to form the signature for the book. I deliberately made the pages a standard size because these pages are removable, and she can replace them easily with papers of her choice from this standard size.
The cover
The Works, a UK shop which sells art supplies, has recently been stocking some gorgeous 12 x 12 in scrapbooking paper pads and I got two of the same design, which is really grungey and vintage. I took one of the pages and cut it down to size to create the cover. The paper is single-sided so I added some inking and stencilling on the inside to co-ordinate with the design of the paper, and then proceeded to embellish the front cover with collage and layered elements, all in subtle neutral shades.
There is a small fragment of my punched and sprayed medication leaflet paper, a scrap of what I think may be mopping-up paper or it may be the edge of a gel print… I have so many tiny scraps and can’t remember where they all came from! There’s a little scrap of corrugated cardboard to which I added a bit of gold gilding wax, and then I glued down some tickets and labels from a recent free digital download to add a little colour and to bring out the subtle green in the background paper. It was topped off with a scrap of grout cleaning cloth and one of Luise Heinz’s butterflies.
The binding
I wanted her to be able to refill this little book with papers of her own choice, so I chose an elastic cord binding. This has to be the simplest of bindings! I have several small packs of this cord elastic in my stash, in various colours (mostly metallic and too bright for this project) but I chose a dark green one, and tied this fairly tightly around the centre of the single signature and the cover, knotting it off at the top of the book. I deliberately left the ends quite long so I could thread on some random beads from my stash. I chose soft green, natural and painted wood, and a couple of distressed gold beads. When I trimmed off the ends of the elastic I sealed them with a lighter flame, and rubbed on a little gilding wax. I also added a small “made with love” charm through the knot at the top.
I left the back cover of the book plain, and just inked around the edges a little. This is such pretty paper with the subtle green leaves and fragments of text.
Back to the front cover, and some detail shots.
I love the German Gothic script on this paper, and was so pleased that I had got Tim Holtz’s equivalent in a stencil to embellish the inside covers!
Inside the cover
This is the inside of the front cover:
and the back:
The leaf border stencil is one I made many years ago.
The pages
As I mentioned above, these are heavy-weight, tea and coffee-dyed. I have inked all around the edges to distress them further. This dye will not reactivate with the further addition of wet media, and being heavy-weight hot-pressed smooth paper, it should take quite a bit of punishment!
Here you can see how the elastic cord passes through the centre of the signature, holding it in place in the cover.
I hope Caroline will enjoy using this small sketchbook which will easily fit into a handbag. She is out and about a lot, and never without a sketchbook and drawing instruments, capturing scenes of everyday life to delight us all. When it is full, she can replace the pages with new ones.
