Making a sketchbook with recycled materials.

Having still Arches watercolor paper from a roll I bought years ago, cut in a landscape format, I thought I needed to put the paper sheets together to make them portable. This idea  was inspired from Stephanie Bower work, she uses this format very often for one  landscape sketch or two square-ish ones in one page, I think it's very versatile.

I could take it to the office store to bind it but I was up to the challenge to make it myself with recycled materials. Long format 16 x 8 in with 24 sheets. I'm so taking this baby to my vacation in Mexico. 

A wire bound taken from a 10 year old sketchbook was used to make this new one. This gives me the idea to show these old sketches in my next post!

Leftover fabric was used to make to covers and old wrapping paper for the back side of the covers. 

I used a drill to make the holes for the sketchbook, first I secured all the paper sheets and cover together to make a block, then drilled the holes,

then smoothed every single hole with a hole punch.

A ribbon from a gift box that came with velcro was used and I adjusted the length to make a secure band.

Boom! Done. I can't wait to use this baby.

Glass art workshop

Sue is a young glass artist. She has a workshop in downtown Joliet, Sue Regis Glass Art, where she teaches the art of glass making. One of my friends found this Joliet hidden treasure and invited a group of friends to take one the workshops Sue offers to the public.  Sue has been working with glass for over 20 years and despite that she cut her finger yesterday, (you can see the band-aid in her right index finger in the sketch above) she didn't cancelled our session; the fingers of this professional artist handled the glass delicately and her trained eye knew exactly when to bend, tilt or cut the molding glass. 

We gathered around the torch to watch to everyone of us make a pendant. Of course I had to sketch this activity, most made on location. Everyone chose different combination of colored glass to personalized their pendant. 

Our pendants turned out wonderful. We had a fun evening. If you want to know more about this talented artist click her Facebook account. Downtown Joliet is changing, a lot of construction is happening now. We were told a nice park will be constructed after the demolition of a building right in front of this workshop,, something it will beneficial to businesses in downtown Joliet. 

Teddy bear

I've been sewing lately. This activity kept me away from sketching. But after I finished my projects, it occurred to me to use the leftover fabric for one last but small one. I found online a pattern of a teddy bear which I thought it was going to be easy to do. I thought it could be done mostly with the sewing machine, but the teddy bear was small, I had to sew by hand most of the time. It doesn't have a name yet but it will come to me. At the end, this beautiful toy and its making needed to be recorded in my sketchbook, sketching was easier, trust me.