King Tut Sketchbook

One thing I really love about bookbinding is being able to make covers out of things that I like and think are cool, but which would probably just be hanging around collecting dust if I didn't do something with them.  I love decorative paper, but it would be pretty weird to buy it and then just stick it in a box, pausing every once in a while to admire it.  There's plenty of package art that I enjoy, but keeping it around just to look at would be too much clutter.  Making these things into book covers lets me enjoy them for a long time to come, while actually getting a useful object out of them.

I was discussing this all with my ladyfriend, and she got the idea to make a book out of her King Tut shopping bag that she had been saving from our trip to the Tutankhamun exhibit in Seattle.  I've previously made gift bags into book covers, and found it is in fact an excellent material for them, being much more resilient than uncoated paper.  She's an artist, so I made her a sketchbook.

 This is the first sketchbook I've ever made, so I had a few engineering challenges.  First, the illustration board I use for book covers is rigid, but I didn't know how it would hold up at the dimensions I was trying for--9"x12.5".  Using two pieces of it glued together, on the other hand, would probably be too much for my hole puncher to punch through.  I ended up using illustration board bonded with a softer cardboard, to make it thicker and stronger but still holepunchable.

Next was the paper.  I've been having a hard time finding good quality drawing paper at a low enough price that I can make books out of it without breaking the bank, but for this project I would need not only good quality paper, but large good quality paper.  With my chosen cover size (chosen so that I could use as much gift bag as possible), I needed 24" long paper.  I ended up buying a huge pad of 18x24" of drawing paper at Blick, and cutting it to dimension.  Which introduced another challenge--cutting 24" of paper with a 22" cutting mat. :)

I wanted the inside covers to be in the same theme as the outside covers, but I didn't have any paper on hand that had an Egyptian feel to it.  Nor did I have any paper more than 12" wide.  I ended up buying a sheet of real Egyptian papyrus to use.  The two sheets of papyrus on the covers cost more than the 30 sheets of drawing paper they contain, but they give the book a real quality feel to it.

Finally I sewed it together with thick braided cotton cord.  I wish the hole punching were a bit cleaner ($8 Home Depot hole punches are rubbish BTW), but that's the only complaint I have with how this book turned out.  All in all it's a gorgeous object that inspires me to draw something Egyptian!