Easy DIY Sketchbooks Hard Covers & Glued Spine

Hello, I'm Crafty Patty, and yep, I'm back with some more fun videos because you left in my comments to say that you wanted to see some more sketchbook ideas. So, I do read them and I do comment to most, 99% of them, and that's why I get to do this for you. In that first sketchbook, we showed you how to do the link stitch. This one was made of cardboard and watercolor paper, and it doesn't lie real flat and it's a little bit bulky, but it was a fun sketchbook to start with. And then I showed you how to make all these collage papers. And all these videos and supplies will be in the description box below this video, so I won't gabber on about every little supply I'm using today. But if you want to learn how to do all the collage papers as well, as well as gel prints, then I'll leave those links below as well. So today, we are going to make this square bound watercolor book that lies nice and flat, and we only use glue. There's no stitching. And I'm showing you the easiest way that I could come up with. And no, I'm not a professional bookbinder, but I always say, whatever works, works. You don't have to follow everybody else's rules. If the job gets done and you're happy with results, then there you go. So keep watching, follow along, and I'm going to show you how to make this beautifully bound, nice, hard front and back. And that's just by using the back of our watercolor board and the watercolor paper inside. So come and join me and let's get started. I'm going to start by cutting my covers first, because you want your cover to be just slightly bigger than your inside pages. Now, just saying, I use and save all the backboards for my watercolor pads. This one happens to be Canson. When I measure this board, it is, in fact, very close to 12 inches, maybe just slightly bigger. On these two different kinds of water pad papers, still saying 9 inches by 12 inches, they are bigger. And there's the difference, almost a quarter inch. So when you see 9 by 12, do not take for granted that your sheets or your backing is actually 9 by 12. The other thing too is the Canson is a little tiny bit thinner than this one. If you haven't saved any board, that's okay. Your local art store will also sell matte board. This is what they make frames out of for all your pictures. And this happens to be four ply. And that's pretty much the same thickness as the Canson. Because I've used up all my watercolor paper in this particular pad, I'm going to try to use this one for my covers. Let's take off this. And don't worry if you've Because this one is just slightly bigger than 12, I've just pushed it over my line over here for my guide and my line over there for my guide. And then I can come in with my safety ruler and come right onto my middle mark, which is 6 inches. And then I can come in with a really sharp exacto knife I find works the best rather than the utility knife. And we'll cut through this board. I'm left handed, so I'm going to come around the other side, pull down hard on your ruler. And be careful, it is sharp exacto knife. That's why I'm saying use your safety ruler and just keep following through until you've cut through. We've cut through this way. And now we want to keep the same square because we're going to make square books the other way. So if I come over this way, that will give me my exact square. I'm just making sure that this is flush on this side here. Flush on the back. And then I'm going to come through with my pencil and mark where I'm going to cut that board off. Just make all your passes until you've cut through your board. Now we want this one identical to this one. Match it all up. Draw our line. And we'll cut our second board. Now we have our two covers. So for today's sketchbook I am using watercolor paper which is cold press and it is 140 pound 9 by 12. Now because I took the board from this Canson watercolor paper pad, it was smaller than this watercolor paper which I still have. So what we're going to start with is we're just going to fold this in half and then we're going to see where we are inside our covers. You have a rough side and you have a smooth side, usually on a watercolor paper. So I'm going to keep the smooth side out for bending this way, the rough side in. I'm just going to come in and I'm going to fold this in half, come down into the middle, making sure you're still lined up, and then bring it across using a bone folder. And you can see that my watercolor paper is larger than my cover. Now I could have taken the backing from here and then they would have all fit nicely. But I just wanted to show you if you're working with different watercolor pads, they are not identical. They're not a true 9 by 12. Just wanted to let you know that. So let's just make sure that the watercolor paper is totally in line with our cover. And then I'm just going to come in with my pencil and I'm going to cut it just slightly shorter than my cover. I've got my measurement right there and my measurement right there. Okay, so let's take off that edge. And now we've got it sitting so slightly shorter than our book this way. I'm going to do the same for this way, just so it's just slightly inside. And I'm going to make it so it's the same as this amount here, same amount this way. And so now I can make a mark just slightly in and just slightly in. Once we've got this for our template, then we can cut all the other ones the same size. But we know that we've got the perfect fit to go inside our cover. And don't worry, we can make something out of these too. And now let's do a test. Locking it all down. And you can see that that paper is just slightly inside all the way around. Once you're happy with your size, then we can cut more papers the identical size. So taking out another piece of your watercolor paper, now we've got our template. So we can line that up exactly with the other one. And we could make our marks where we're cutting on heights and widths. Fold in half. And then continue to make as many as you want for the size of sketchbook that you want. So this is 10 pieces of watercolor paper folded, and that will give me about a half an inch size of a book, not including the covers. And then once we have our covers on, it will look about like so. Now to get these to lie as flat as possible, I'm going to reverse that fold, use my bone folder, bring it back to the original side again, and again. And I'll do that with each one of my signatures. Before I put the sketchbook together, I would like to place my decorative cover on the front and the back. So I've got all these papers I've been making, so why not use them? So I'm just going to place my board on the back, and I'm just trying to find where I like the placement. I've got a couple lines here, so I want to make sure I don't get that crooked. So I'm looking at that for the pattern. That doesn't look too bad there. And then you've got about that much on the top, so I think that might work. And then that would come in, and that would come in. Okay, so I'm liking my placement, so I'm just going to come over here, and I'm going to use my bone folder just to fold it down so I don't lose my placement. And I'll also come up on the ends and do the same thing, fold over and give it a good crease, and fold this end over and give that a crease. And then I've got my marks when I take my board away. Take the board away, and I now can see where my marks are. I'm just going to cut off some of the excess from here. Okay, and then on the corners, you want to leave the same thickness as your mount board or whatever board you're using for your cover. So that's the thickness you want to leave so you don't cut right into that corner. So what I'm going to do is just cut in like this, leaving that depth, and then come out again. So we've got that amount of depth as same as this. I'm going to be using Liquitex Matte Medium for my glue, and I already have some in my cup here, and I'm using a color shaper, silicone color shaper, to apply the glue because if you don't have all the bristles in, it's so easy to clean the brush afterwards. So I'm going to apply some on the back of my board here, so that really soaks in because it's quite porous, and I'll also apply some to my decorative cover over here. Leave sides together, matching up where our creases were for our paper. A little bit higher up here, and now that I've got my board on here, I've got, I can see I've gotten too much on my corners here, so I'm just going to trim that down a little bit more. So as I said, it's the thickness of my board. Now while this is wet, I'm going to turn this over, and you can either use like a credit card or whatever you want, but I happen to have this for my painting as a catalyst, so I'm just going to start from the middle and push out so there's no bubbles or wrinkles in there, or it's totally set with that glue. I'll use my fingers as well, just to make sure that's really sticking nicely, and now let's turn that over, and we can glue it to the other side. Again, I'm going to apply some glue to the board, as well as to this edge. While that is still wet, I'm going to pull this one in right away, lifting it up and over, and pull it down. Let's turn that over, and we'll do the opposite side. Now we can do our other sides, and we'll let that dry, and there's our first one. That's pretty cool, it's fun, and I'll do the same thing for the other back. I think this time I didn't quite get it very close to my corners, so I'm going to do the gluing first this time. I'm going to choose that to be my inside, just in case some of that roughness shows, so I'll use this side for my cover, and now take all your signatures, tap them down, make sure they're all level on the bottom, making sure that they're level side to side as well. That top is over a little bit. Once you're happy with your placement here, come on the opposite side and hold them in place with some ball clips, and now we can come in with our paper front and our paper back, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to try to match this up, so this is level with all the papers inside. This one has to come further back, and then that same amount of coming over the pages here is here. I'm a little bit further to the right, I'm just going to sneak it up that way. It's a little bit of fiddling, but you'll be happier if it's neat and tidy. Spend a little few extra minutes just holding that where it should be. Then what we're going to do is, just in case there's any glue that hasn't dried yet, I should really let this dry first, and that's I'm telling you, let this dry first, but I'm trying to do a quick video. So I'm going to place a piece of parchment paper down on both sides so it doesn't, my cover doesn't stick to anything, just as an extra precaution. I'm going to come in with those extra pieces of board that we had from cutting off the excess of this. I'm going to place that, because I don't have a book press, so we're doing this with what we have. I'm going to move that back because I don't want that glued. Same for the back, and the reason I'm doing that is so I don't get a mark in my covers when I put on my C-clamps. Okay, that's still feeling pretty good. Okay, once you're happy with it, come in with the C-clamp. I'm just going to get this started for now, and then once it's just about where I want it, then I'm going to lift it up so I can get in there with the glue. Right now, I'm just trying to get it so it's halfway there. So once it's about there, then I can still sneak in there with my glue. Let's come in on the other side, do the same for this one. So if you don't have a book press, then this is a great way of doing it. This side hopefully should be okay as well because we've got the cardboard on the side, so it shouldn't indent our cover. I almost should have another third one in here. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to release this just a bit because it's bowing in the middle. It'd be nicer if it was like all the same all the way across, so I can take these old clips off now. And this is the glue I've chosen to use today, Gleam Glee book glue, and the reason I'm particularly using book glue is because of the flexible bond. It's thought to give that way strong hold and it dries clear. Let's start over here pulling some of the glue, and it's okay if I get it on my cover. But mostly I'm worried about just getting it into my pages. I'm going to sneak it in here past my clamp so I can reach it from both sides. And then this particular glue comes with a little spatula so you can get in there and really push it in to all those pages. You want enough glue but not too much that it's seeping between the pages, even though it shouldn't because we've really clamped down good. And now we can finish the rest. Okay, so that's one coat. I'm going to let this dry and I'll come back and just feel how tacky it is. And if there's no tackiness left, it does say on the box it takes 24 hours to totally dry, but I won't wait 24 hours for each coat. It probably won't do much, but I've just added one more clamp in the middle here. That's all I had, but probably when I do it again I think I would get three of these C-clamps and that would do it for sure. And I would move this one further down and then that one in the middle. That would be perfect. So three C-clamps would be great. So I did get a bit busy and this is now the next day. I'm feeling this glue and this is the first time I've used this random book glue, and I don't know if you can hear that but it's still really sticky. It does say it takes 24 hours to cure. I'm not quite at 24 hours, but I'm going to go ahead and put my second coat on. Being that this has set up pretty good, I'm going to take off my C-clamp so it's easier to apply my second coat. And now I can come right along and using my little spatula to smooth it in. And there we go. I'll probably leave that to sit overnight as well and then we'll do our third coat the next day. Oops, I got a bit of dirt in there. There we go. Just for safe measure, I'm gonna put the clamp back on and I'm going to clamp it closer into the middle this time. Just a little closer into the middle. Now that's it. And just to let you know, to clean off my little spatula here I'm using the Murphy oil soap and it works fantastic. So this has been sitting probably for I don't know about maybe four or five hours since I last looted. And so I'm just going to come in for my third coat and I am letting you know that it is still really sticky. I don't need these right now. Just leave that on just to protect in case I make any loose spillage. And I'll come in for my third coat. And it is going over my covers. I'm okay with that. I'm going to clamp it just for the sake. It doesn't really need to be clamped again. It's not going anywhere. But I'll put them on anyways just for the added security. All right, so I'll just let that set up again for about another four or five hours and then we'll come back to you. Okay, so that's our third layer of glue. So I'm just going to take off all these. And that's what we've got. Now as I kept saying, this is the first time I've used this book glue and it says 24 hours to cure. It's still really sticky. But I'm really loving how this opens up nice and flat. Beautiful. And it looks like we've got good glue on all of the pages here. And everyone opens up flat. Love that. So I've got some white book binding tape here that will be just wide enough to go over my back of my spine. So I'm just going to cut it a bit longer than my book. And then I'm going to attempt to get this so it's about same thickness on both sides. So I can when I put this down, I've got a little bit of a see-through. It's not bad. Okay, I'm going to go for that. So I'm just going to press it down to the middle there. And then press on top. Bring it down. And bring it down to the back. We didn't do too bad there for evenness. There's the other side. It's not exactly dead on, but I'm okay with that. Just some observation here. I'm liking the tape. And I like that I did have this excess here. But as you can see, it makes for a little excess tape right here. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to cut in right here. And I'm just going to push that in. And I like the look of that better. Now if I was to do this again, I would probably make my covers just that little bit smaller than I have here. Like I said, I'm not a professional bookbinder, but we're having fun, right? And the last thing I'm going to do is I'm going to glue this first page to my cover. So to do that, I'm just going to use that little piece of parchment paper I already cut. Just pop that in there so that protects my next page. And I'm going to glue this and this with my Liquitex Matte Medium. Making sure you get right up to the edges. And I'm also going to glue on this side as well. Because again, like I say, that the boarding is quite porous and it will really soak in the glue. This one, I'll go a little tiny bit careful. On this side, I'll go not all the way up to the edge because I've got glue on this side. That'll be okay. It will stick. I'm going to bring another book over just so I can use that to press down. And this is not gluing on my edge here, so I'm going to apply more glue. It's not sticking. So add more glue. This glue, the Liquitex Matte Medium dries quite fast. Okay, so once you're sure that is glued down, take a clean piece of parchment. I've got glue on that piece. I'll fold this over just to protect anything. And let's glue our back side as well. Clean piece of parchment paper, bringing it over. And I've just got this nice big heavy book I'll put on there and I'll let that sit for a bit and make sure our covers are glued. Well, I am super pleased how my sketchbook turned out. It's got those beautiful hard covers. I was able to use up some of my collage papers for the front and the back. It lays nice and flat and I will definitely be making more of these. I'm really, really pleased. And I'm sure you will too if you make this and follow my instructions. Now, remember in the video, if you're watching, I said that maybe we could use something for this. Originally, I thought I would fold this up and make an accordion style sketchbook for you. But seeing as the papers are already cut like this, ready to go, I thought why not make another little sketchbook. So I have made this one and now this one will open up and you can do a little landscape or you can do something this way. And again, I've used my collage papers to cover the front and back and this was made exactly the same way that I made this one. So there is no waste in paper. There's my paper that we cut from our 9 by 12 watercolor paper and so I got two books out of it. Now, I chose to use watercolor paper but you can use mixed media paper, bamboo paper, what other kind of paper you want, even like lime paper if you want for more of a journal. It's endless what you want and what you can do. So thank you so much for staying till the end and I've got more sketchbook ideas up my sleeve as well and you just never know what crafty Patty will be up to next. And until next time, bye-bye.