The Handbound Sketchbook

– Live Creative Class –

• Early Bird Price •

• Join us Live - August 28th @ 12:00pm EST •

You’ll explore how to:

• Bind a beautiful, functional sketchbook using simple materials

• “Charge” your sketchbook through sacred preparation and intention-setting

• Create a personal sketchbook blessing or creative invocation

• Establish a meaningful daily ritual with simple mark-making, symbols, and reflections

• Use your sketchbook as a space for presence, process, and self-remembrance

Whether you’re a seasoned journaler or new to creativity as a devotional practice, this class is more than creating a sketchbook; it’s a powerful way to deepen your creative life with a container for your deepest imaginative desires, wanderings, and musings. Whether you’re a doodler, a painter, a writer, or an intuitive explorer, this sketchbook will be your portal to your inner wisdom.

Come with open hands and a curious heart. Leave with a handmade sketchbook ready to hold the unfolding of your days or years to come. Let's start with one mark, one breath, one page at a time.

• A hand crafted sketchbook

• Tips on how to prepare a sketchbook as a sacred space for creative devotion

• Techniques for intuitive mark-making and symbolic visual language with attention on daily practices

• Suggestions for how to consider color, texture, and layering as soul expressions

• A month of prompts for exploring sketchbooking as devotion

• Ideas for integrating archetypes and sacred symbols into your pages as devotion and inspiration

• Approaches to working with both paper and fabric in the bookbinding process

Two identical hard surfaces for the cover of your sketchbook. Recommended sizes are 5x7 or 8x10 or 9x12. This can be any of the following substrates:

• Canvas panels

• The sturdy backing of a pad of paper

• Davey Board (bookbinder's board)

A way to add color to your pages & to your covers

• Combination of acrylic paints, paint markers, watercolors & gouache, and fountain pen inks. You may use whatever medium you prefer, but make sure it can be dried rather quickly.

(OPTIONAL) Paper or Canvas Paper for signature cover wraps

• Kiala prefers to use thin canvas paper or mixed-media paper for this.

• Suggested size is 11 x 14 or 9x12

Inside Papers -- bring your favorite paper for sketching

• Kiala will be using sketching paper from Bee Paper Company. It's 9x12 and 68lbs (100gsm)

• You will need at least 10 sheets of your favorite paper for sketching or whatever paper you want in your sketchbook.

• If you like a chunkier sketchbook, you can bring more sheets.

• Use a size that folds in half to be the size of the sketchbook you most want to use.

• Kiala will be demonstrating with mostly blank papers, and she invites you to start with blank pages as well so that she can demonstrate her "charging" method.

• Two sheets of blank mixed media (or similar) papers that are at least 11x14

• Your favorite mark-making tools -- "shop your stash"

Basic bookbinding tools

• Awl (or paper piercer)

• Scissors

• Cutting mat

• X-acto knife or similar craft cutting tool

• Metal ruler for tearing paper (and measuring, if that's your thing)

• Bone folder (or paper creaser)

• Bookbinding needle (you can use any sturdy needle with a sharp tip)

• Bookbinding thread

  • Kiala uses traditional bookbinding waxed linen thread, but here are some alternatives if you don't have bookbinder's thread

  • linen thread that you wax yourself using beeswax

  • embroidery floss (6 strands is best and you'll want to wax them before using for bookbinding)

  • Sashiko thread (needs to be waxed before using for binding)

  • pearl cotton -- if it has a sheen you may not need to wax it

  • crochet thread -- depending on the kind, it may need wax

• OPTIONAL - ribbon for a closure, if you like having a way to wrap something around your sketchbook to keep it closed.

BONUS (If Time Allows)

Kiala will guide us through a few sketching prompts, so bring your favorite sketching materials

• Pencils

• Pens

• Erasers

• Blending stumps

• etc.