Sketchbook

Some of you wished to see more of the handdyed bookcloth, so here it is again in a bit more "processed" form. This book belongs in my line of A6 (approximately postcard) sized sketchbooks that I make for my Etsy bookshop and the PikkuPutiikit shop in Tampere, Finland. I like to think these books as small everyday luxuries, something you can either give as a gift or keep yourself; The world is full of ordinary blank books so I kind of thought I might as well make something slightly different then. Because all these books are covered with the handdyed cloth none of them are exactly identical.




These books don't have separate glued-on endpapers, which in fact makes them a bit sturdier, as the 160g/m² paper of the book block is pasted straight to the inner covers and the hinge area is reinforced with mull. Through personal experience, I have come to the conclusion that since visual journals and sketchbooks are often carried around and altered with different kinds of media, they have to be compact and hard-wearing - even if they were rather small in size like these ones.



The book pictured is at the moment for sale on my Etsy bookshop, so in case you're interested you can find it here. I will be adding more books in the following weeks now that I have sold most of my old work and the shop looks quite empty. I'm still open for commissioned work too, but my turnaround times might be a bit longer than usual, being the summer and all.

I also want to take this opportunity to say hi to all the new people reading my blog - I appreciate it and it's nice to meet you, so thanks for following!

Vintage fabrics

The May Day is getting close and I have tried my best to do absolutely nothing! So I thought I'd just share a couple of pictures of these new blank books I have made for Onnia Fabric. The books are covered with vintage and antique Finnish home textiles. Adding to the uniqueness of each book, many of the textiles used are handmade and/or hand embroidered.



The philosophy of Onnia Fabric is to rescue and repurpose beautiful fabrics and create all sorts of neat and practical things such as household items and jewelry out of them. Naturally, some of the old fabrics may have small flaws like holes or rusty stains but all the clean parts of them can be used for new creations. I love this concept so I decided to collaborate: Anni chooses the fabrics from her vast collection, maybe gives me some ideas, and I make them materialise as these universal books that can be used as journals, guestbooks, sketchbooks..



The books pictured in this post are sized approximately A6 and feature 100 pages of off-white paper, and you can find them and a couple of other ones for sale on Onnia Fabric online shop.

Thoughts on paper

As a person who likes to sketch, smudge and cover everything with paint I'm a bit selective with the papers and the structure of the books I bind. I need them to be compact, open well, resist wear and tear, tolerate odd water media and not fall apart.

I mostly use fine, archival quality Munken papers which are manufactured in Europe by Arctic Paper. My favourite is the off-white and cream shade Munken Pure which is FSC & PEFC certified, uncoated and fully biodegradable. In some of the chunkier sketchbooks I like to use sturdy drawing papers like Canson Mi-Teintes, which seems to be suitable not just for pastels but for all sorts of media including inks, acrylics, pens, pencils and even tea or watercolour. I have tried them all and am entirely satisfied with the results! I have made the same experiment with 120 g/m² Munken Pure, with similar success. Never until now I have understood how much I love good paper.

When I ruin a book experiment I usually repurpose it as a personal journal - the sketchbook pictured above was screwed up last year and then got quietly decorated with ink portraits of V. Butusov (...). I find it easier to draw in awful looking books. As long as the paper is fine, everything is fine.