Borderline Sketchbook

It remains a mystery to me why a project that was almost completely done in the summer took so long to finish. It was lingering on my desk and my to-do list for months now and the only thing I needed to do was add matte medium to the covers to preserve them. Finally I did the deed yesterday and the sketchbook is now ready to be mailed off to the Brooklyn Art Library and become part of the Sketchbook Project. I have been participating in these yearly sketchbook projects for quite some years now and this is my 6th sketchbook. You can see the previous ones here.

In the previous ones I left the sketchbooks mainly in tact apart from glueing pages together but for this one I wanted to make the entire book itself the art project. I had chosen as my theme Borders and Lines, and after some thinking I cut the pages in various widths going from about 1/2 inch at the beginning of the book to almost the complete page at the end. I left the covers in tact as that's almost mandatory. The size of the original sketchbook is 5 x 7". You can see how it looked at that stage above. I had started by painting what remained of the pages gold and then collaged over them using paper napkins, tissue paper and various texts such as bits of a Spanish newspaper that I picked up somewhere.

I then added different laces in between the pages. The laces were stiffened up first using a thinned down PVA glue to make them stand up and they were space dyed before stiffening. I sewed them in between two pages. Above the first very thin (about 1/2") page. Following are all the pages in the order that they are in the sketchbook itself.

 As you can see I stamped sayings about borders and lines on the edge of the pages.

 I used different lace on each page.

 The above is probably my favourite of this sketchbook. By some flukish coincidence I found an article about Paul Klee in the Spanish newspager! Such great synchronicity once again.

 This is the front cover with collage, glued on lace and the title of the sketchbook stamped on.

On the left hand side is this Sketchbook's barcode in the Brooklyn Art Library that will be scanned every time someone borrows it. This can be done in the library itself but the sketchbook will also go on tour in 2014. The Sketchbook Project has now become so popular that not all the sketchbooks can go on one large tour as happened this year but instead there will be 4 different tours in various areas of the United States. As I won't be there anyway I choose the 2014 South East Tour  for no other reason than that I know at least some people (such as Lenna!) who live there. Every time my sketchbook get borrowed I receive an e-mail. The sketchbook that was on tour this summer was borrowed many times in many different places and it was such a treat to see that people I didn't know and probably will never know were enjoying looking through my book.

This book will be going postal in the next few days and no doubt I will sign up again as soon as it is possible for the 2015 tour!