Map of America Sketchbook

This is a book I made for Christmas for my girlfriend's father, who is an artist and a map-maker at the USGS.  In that spirit, I thought a durable sketchbook he could draw in while taking the bus to work would be a nice gift, and found a plastic-covered map of the United States at Goodwill that I thought might make a nice cover.

I've never worked with this particular material for covers before, and it was harder to work than I thought.  The cover ended up with bubbles I wasn't able to work out, as the glue didn't adhere very well to the plastic covering.  The upshot to this is that it is very durable, water resistant and scuff resistant.

For the inside cover I used a nice blue damask patterned paper...

The pages are 18x12 80 lb. drawing paper (folded in half for a final page size of 9x12), cut to size from 18x24 original paper that I buy in bulk.

I learned a lot about my stitching technique using alternating colors for each section.  If you're not happy with your Coptic stitch, I recommend doing a black/white alternation.