DIY SKETCHBOOKS - No Stitching & No Stapler

*blink* Hello everyone! So in today's video, I'm going to show you how you can make your own custom

sketchbooks

using a couple different methods and none of these methods involve sewing or using a

stapler

. First I just wanted to say that this video is sponsored by Skillshare which is a website that has a lot of videos for you to learn various skills, they are just tutorials so it is very easy to find what you are looking for without having to go through a Lots of unrelated videos and you can learn all kinds of related topics. for design, painting, illustration, photography and a lot of really interesting creative topics.

They have over 13,000 classes, so you can sign up to watch some of these classes or you can sign up to be a teacher and make your own videos for Skillshare. and earn some money. It costs about ten dollars a month depending on the plan you choose and if you use the link in the video description you can get 3 months for only 99 cents. Thank you very much Skillshare for reaching out to us and I will now do so. I show you what I learned using your video tutorials so far. This first method is binding but without a

stapler

, so here I'm just taking some drawing paper from a sketchbook and I know you might be thinking it's strange to use just a sketchbook. paper to make a different sketchbook but I have so many

sketchbooks

that have been given to me so I decided why not use this paper that is here and it would be a pretty good paper for a sketchbook because it is sketchbook paper *laughs* So here I'm just folding it in half carefully so it's very even and I'm using a bone folder to soften the edges.

You can use your finger or some other hard object, like sometimes I use the side of the scissors as the handle of scissors to smooth things out, you can use a butter knife pretty much anything and just fold all the sheets of paper in half, then you will take each little booklet and stick them inside each other to form a book and I use 10 sheets which gives me 20 sheets once everything is folded in half and you can even use a few more sheets if you want. Next, it's time to make a cover for your book and you can print your own art and use something like that as a cover. or you could do what I'm doing and use some scrapbook paper and since my sketchbook paper was 9 by 12 and the scrapbook paper is 12 by 12, the length actually ends up being perfect and then I just have to trim off a little bit of the excess. the top here I'm just trimming the paper to be 9 inches tall to match the size of the inside of the book.

You'll notice that when I place the pieces of paper inside the cover, the cover looks too short and that's just because when you fold a bunch of sheets of paper, the innermost parts stick out and that's called page shifting, so let's having to trim the edges so that all the papers stick out the same amount below. I'm going to put two staples in without a stapler so I'm using my ruler to measure where I want the staples to go and I actually measured wrong on one side it's too close to the edge of the book but I fixed it later and the staples are about 1 .25 centimeters wide so that's where I made my lines and then I use a small pin to poke holes in the books which is actually pretty easy to do I just took the staple and stuck it to the back of the book . you turn it over and then you just fold down the little arms of the staple and I just use the back of my knife to push them down and I just push down again with my bone folder to make sure the book stays extra. flat and now it's time to cut off the excess pieces of paper.

I just put my ruler on the edge of the book and used my knife to cut one or two layers of paper at a time, for some reason I always thought about cutting out a book. This would be a little difficult, you know, I thought it wouldn't turn out right, but as I saw on Skillshare, it's pretty easy as long as you use the ruler and don't press too hard and like I said, just cut. one or two sheets at a time, it's actually very easy to get a nice flat edge and then as you can see all the pieces are the same length, how nice, and I decided I wanted to go one step further and round the corners of my book so I have this little paper punch that rounds the corners for me, it's not the prettiest as sometimes it leaves a bit of a jagged edge but I want to buy a nicer one but it still worked so I did it I pierced and pierced.

I punched two or three pages at a time until I finished the entire book and I also did it in the top corner. There you have it, a sketchbook stitched together without the use of a long arm stapler because let's be honest, who has a long arm? stapler in your house there are not many people before moving on to the second method. I just wanted to let you know that the tutorials I followed on Skillshare were those by Caleb Sylvest. He has several classes related to book binding and that's how I learned everything here, like not to use a stapler to staple.

I would never have thought of that, so I learned quite a few interesting tips from his courses and now I move on to method number two, which will be a perfectly bound book with a glued spine. I'm taking the same nine by twelve paper that I used in part one, but I'm marking half the paper and cutting all the pages in half instead of folding them and I'm using my knife and ruler if you have a guillotine. cutter that will save you some time. I have one but I just wanted to show you the knife method for this specific book again, without too much pressure just go one or two pages at a time and slowly work your way through the stack how many pages you use is totally up to you and I just combined the two stacks to make sure they were all nice and flush and then clamped them together just to keep them together.

I squeeze the paper between some heavy books and I'm using this. glue to stick the spine on, you want something that is pH neutral, not acidic, otherwise it will eventually discolor and all that, you always want it to be acid free when it comes to paper and you also want a glue that dries very flexible, which ideal is to use a PVC Glue but not all PVC glue dries super flexible, this one specifically stated it was for book binding so that's what I use and I use three coats of glue waiting for the glue to dry between layers.

I actually made 4, the tutorial says three, but I used four coats of glue while the glue dries. I decided to make my endpapers that are part of the inside of the book, so I fold them in half with the pattern side facing in and press them down to make them nice and flat. The pages are now dry and this is what it looks like and I'm going to take some glue and glue the final pages into this book. You can also use double sided tape if you want, but I decided to use glue for mine just a little.

I will warn you that if you decide to use glue like I am doing, it dries very quickly, so you have to work quickly, otherwise the corners will not stick. Make sure the glue goes directly to each edge and corner. cover time I took some chipboard, I cut it to be nine by six inches and I have more scrapbook paper also cut to nine by six inches and I'm gluing the paper to the chipboard. I didn't even realize you could make a cover like this using two completely separate pieces for the cover, so without the Skillshare video I never would have known you could do it this way.

I would have tried wrapping a piece around the book and then it's time to take the cover the pieces and glue them onto the final sheet, so I'll apply the glue directly to the side of the chipboard and then glue it to my book. Another tip I learned from the Skillshare video is that at this stage you should flatten your book underneath a little. heavy books to dry flat, otherwise the cover pieces might curl over the edges. The next step is to make the spine, so let's grab some tape here. This tape is actually not that sticky.

I bought two types of decorations. The pink tape was pretty sticky, the gold one wasn't sticky enough, so I don't really recommend this material, but get some masking tape and stick it to the spine of the book in the tutorial I saw. They actually put the tape on when We're at the bookend stage before applying the cover, but I thought it would look better if I put the tape on top of the cover, so here is the finished book, bound perfectly. It lies nice and flat, which is pretty good for drawing and this. one doesn't have the edges of the cover folded over, so this edge is a little rough, but I'll show you another one I made.

In fact, I have a whole stack here. You already saw this one at the beginning of the video, but here they are. a few others i made this is the one that is perfectly bound with the cover rolled because it is actually a different paper this is my cardstock instead of just sketchbook paper and this paper is a little smaller so this piece of scrapbook paper was big enough that I could fold it if I had trimmed the other one a little. I also could have folded the paper so you can see this edge looks a lot better because the cover is completely wrapped in paper, so yeah, this one feels really nice.

I definitely recommend doing it this way, but yes, I have bookmark paper and then I have another binding book that has different dimensions, it's a little more square, it's a 6 by 7 book and yes, this one just has the notebook paper of normal sketches. Again, I made this one with watercolor paper and this one is actually wider, it opens like this and it has watercolor paper inside again, it lies very, very flat, which is good for your watercolor illustrations and yes, it is funny, not this one. It doesn't have a back cover, it's like that, while the other one does have a back cover.

I love when the inner leaves are there, although they look very pretty, just look at how elegant and fun it feels because it's homemade. Oh yes, these were. super fun to make, I definitely recommend you try it and they don't just have to be sketchbooks, you can put lined paper to make it into a notebook, you can put that dotted paper to make a bullet journal, you can print some out. of your art and turn it into an art book however you want and now that I'm done with these I'm tempted to make more but I want to see other tutorials on Skillshare, there are some on hand lettering and watercolor drawing patterns. techniques that I'm really interested in, so I have them saved to look at later because I'm really interested in that, especially hand lettering because I'm terrible at that, so I'm excited to learn some new skills, so yeah, that's it all for this video, if you want.

If you are interested in joining Skillshare for 3 months for only 99 cents, the link is below, thanks for watching and I'll see you in my next video.