Day 5: 2012 - The Sketchbook of 2011

I've talked about it off and on over the last few months: The Sketchbook Project run by the ArtCoop in New Jersey.  The final product from 2011 is due on January 31st.  Nancie Johnson and I ran a "Conversation" in watercolor, sending pages back and forth from California to New Jersey, having a transcontinental "talk". 

I'm now frantically binding the project into a book since there's no way at all that our project will fit into the original Sketchbook.  The rules were that you could rebind, redo in any way at all as long as the original measurements of 5" x 7" held.  Our book is going to be about 3/4 of an inch thick, with photos and envelopes and some kind of tie to hold the whole thing shut.

I've been dreaming about this, pondering this, wandering through the Dick Blick store's supply of bookbinding kits, went to a class there about making journals.......

I feel like I have a huge high school/college exam coming up that I need to cram for!

So tonight I started in on it.

Two pieces of thick chip board, cut to 5x7 size by my friends at Anthony's Framing in San Marino, California.  They are the nicest group of men, always so willing to help me!

Then I covered the chip board with a nonspecific gift wrap paper, creating a spine at the same time.

This is what the outside looks like at this moment.

I'm using a bookbinding product, gummed linen tape, to create the hingeing in this project.  I used it to make the spine, thinking that it's a pretty sturdy product.  You can see it in picture one.

I'm messing with our photographs.  Nancie sent me a picture of herself that she painted several years ago.  It looks as if it was a photoshop image (which she didn't think was very nice of me to say) so I asked her to photoshop the photo of me so that we'd look kind of alike.

So she took this photo and changed it to this:

And then I cut them down the middle to see if I could create a combined person and have it look anything but really weird.  It's not all that bad but I don't think I'll use it.  I think I'll use full size photos that have been photoshopped.

Still working hard on it.  Gotta get it finished tomorrow as the weekend is taken up with a 40th anniversary celebration.  Our adult children are driving in from San Francisco and taking us out to dinner.  Whoopee!