Scratch-built Sketchbook

Because I am a horrible person who didn't go to my friend's baby shower, I thought I'd make her a gift for the occasion instead. I've been building up to something like this for a while, but I never really had an excuse until now. She's really into stuff like homemades, organics, and yarn-bombing, so this seemed like the right thing I could do.

The paper is homemade from shredder scrap, which turned out to be a bad source. I thought I'd save time blending since it was already in tiny bits, but I found out later that it included pieces of credit cards that I was pulling out the whole time. Otherwise, I found out that making rustic, homemade paper is ridiculously easy; I pretty much just pulped paper in water and spread it out on an old window screen. The end sheets were far from uniform in thickness, but I guess that's kind of the charm.

Everything else is put together from what I had around the house; fabric from a Halloween costume, cardboard backing made from an old G5 Powermac box, nylon thread I used to stitch the skin on my kayak, macrame cord left over from my father-in-law's cello chair, and hemp thread from an old beading venture. Anything that isn't stitched down is glued with plain ol' white glue.

22 pages, about 6 by 12 inches.