The Sketch Book Project part 1

This fall I signed up for The Sketchbook Project - my book arrived in the mail and last weekend I took a little "me" time and started working on it. I thought I would document it's progress.

The fun package arrived from Art House Coop in Brooklyn

They sent me a notebook to work some magic on and information  & rules for the project

so the first thing I did was rip it all apart -
but carefully saved  the bar code to reapply to the finished cover
to identify it as mine 

I selected handmade papers for the outside and inside of the cover

I decided on the look of an old book -this paper looks like distressed leather

I can't live with out Best Test spray adhesive! 

For the inside of the cover I used a beautiful piece of marbleized paper
I've been saving to for ages and it was perfect for this project. 

I cut it carefully to size so I didn't waste any of it...

Here it is with both papers applied over the original cardboard cover
but I thought it still needed "something"

it needed a spine -for this I used a piece of "suede" paper in  dark blue  - I wrote on it with a metallic pen. The title is "Create & Capture" the theme I selected for my project

after creating the spine, I decided it also needed corners -so I sewed the suede paper on  my sewing machine 

I wanted to also create a frontispiece for the front cover so I took a metal file label frame and pounded it flat  

I then worked on antiquing it...

I took an old piece of journal paper and stamped the title to fit in the frame

I then glued all the embellishments to the cover and was pleased with the results...