After finishing my Pentalic sketchbook much faster than the previous Moleskine one, I only had another Hahnemühle watercolor sketchbook, which I'm working in now, but no idea what brand to try out next. I'd always wanted a sketchbook with a real leather cover and living in Italy I didn't think some leather should be too hard to come by. I already had a block of 100% cotton 300gsm paper lying around, which I bought but didn't know what to do with yet since I don't usually work that large so I decided to use half of the block for the sketchbook. The leather I got from a tiny shop practically around the corner from where I live and the owner was really nice and gave me three sheets for the price of two. They were large enough to make two sketchbooks out of one sheet but of course I messed up the dimensions on my first cut. I used cardboard from frozen pizza boxes for the covers and binding the leather around them wasn't too hard, though a bit of a pain without a proper tool for making holes. For binding the pages I sketched out some patterns on paper to estimate which would work the best and the one I thought would work great turned out to make it really hard to keep the pages tightly bound so it created horrible gaps between the pages. I tried simply being a bit more careful with the same method but I still couldn't get everything bound tightly but I left it as is and decided to try again from scratch, to see if I could improve on the cover as well. I looked up how to tie a more secure knot and I bound the pages in a much simpler way which allows me to keep everything as tight as it possibly can. Now there's just one problem left; with the pages bound so tightly I need to figure out a new way to bind them to the cover to still allow the sketchbook to lay flat since it is, in fact, supposed to be a sketchbook. Until I figure that out I'll keep the slightly less perfectly bound one. At least both are adorned with a stamp of my logo which I made with my wax seal stamp. I can't wait till I finish my Hahnemühle sketchbook so I can use the one I made myself. Though it's much cheaper than just buying a new one, it takes quite a bit of work to make a sketchbook like this, but that'll make it all the more satisfying to paint in it. I'm not sure how I'll like the portrait format but I might never go back to simply buying sketchbooks.
After finishing my Pentalic sketchbook much faster than the previous Moleskine one, I only had another Hahnemühle watercolor sketchbook, which I'm working in now, but no idea what brand to try out next. I'd always wanted a sketchbook with a real leather cover and living in Italy I didn't think some leather should be too hard to come by. I already had a block of 100% cotton 300gsm paper lying around, which I bought but didn't know what to do with yet since I don't usually work that large so I decided to use half of the block for the sketchbook. The leather I got from a tiny shop practically around the corner from where I live and the owner was really nice and gave me three sheets for the price of two. They were large enough to make two sketchbooks out of one sheet but of course I messed up the dimensions on my first cut. I used cardboard from frozen pizza boxes for the covers and binding the leather around them wasn't too hard, though a bit of a pain without a proper tool for making holes. For binding the pages I sketched out some patterns on paper to estimate which would work the best and the one I thought would work great turned out to make it really hard to keep the pages tightly bound so it created horrible gaps between the pages. I tried simply being a bit more careful with the same method but I still couldn't get everything bound tightly but I left it as is and decided to try again from scratch, to see if I could improve on the cover as well. I looked up how to tie a more secure knot and I bound the pages in a much simpler way which allows me to keep everything as tight as it possibly can. Now there's just one problem left; with the pages bound so tightly I need to figure out a new way to bind them to the cover to still allow the sketchbook to lay flat since it is, in fact, supposed to be a sketchbook. Until I figure that out I'll keep the slightly less perfectly bound one. At least both are adorned with a stamp of my logo which I made with my wax seal stamp. I can't wait till I finish my Hahnemühle sketchbook so I can use the one I made myself. Though it's much cheaper than just buying a new one, it takes quite a bit of work to make a sketchbook like this, but that'll make it all the more satisfying to paint in it. I'm not sure how I'll like the portrait format but I might never go back to simply buying sketchbooks.
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