Making your own Watercolor Sketchbook

Happily taking Brenda Swenson's idea today, I decided that instead of ordering a really expensive sketchbook with unknown quality of paper..I would do as she does and design my own.

If you check out her blog you'll find a step by step of how she does it. I did a "take off" on that.

I used the size she suggested which is 10 x 12. That way you can get 6 pages out of a 30 x 22 sheet of your favorite watercolor paper. This time I used Arches 140# rough.

The cover and back are just some old mat board cut slightly larger than the pages. The cover was decorated by glueing on a piece of colorful wrapping paper. (I used YES glue.) You could also paint on a cover, or collage, or anything creative. I am into keeping this very simple.

Brenda uses 18 pages in her journals. In this trial I am just using 6 pages and instead of taking it out to be spiral bound...I am just using bull dog clips.

Here is the way it looks with the cover removed and just the back board under the pages. So this is the way it would look when I am working with it en plein air.

My thought is that I will use the pages and then remove them as they are done. Later, if I want to chose some to be spiral bound I could do that. OR I could just keep finished them in a folder or a zip lock bag, or I could 3 hole punch them and put them into a notebook for reference and keep them in chronological order.

I'll should get a chance to try all this out Thursday morning. IF we don't blow away tonight.

A HUGE storm is headed into northern WI and should hit us tonight. We have had a lot of really scary storms up here lately. This one could produce high winds and hail. This is especially nasty when you live in a forest. We almost always lose power as the trees come down on the lines and we have to pray that no tree will damage a building either! I thought I'd post this tonight as I might not have a chance for awhile. Wish us luck!