More Cardboard Printing

Cardboard Christmas

Ready-made Book Covers from cardboard box art

When making my handmade sketchbooks, I enjoy recycling found designs from bags, boxes, and Other ready-made art. We are surrounded by interesting colors, textures, and designs which invariably get tossed into a landfill somewhere. Why not repurpose the artwork instead?

The samples in this post are from a case of Kraft macaroni and cheese boxes. Using current gated cardboard for book covers is not the best choice because the current Dacian makes for bumpy texture. It also tends to compress over time.

Instead, I prefer to “skin” the surface layer Of the boxes which have the designs printed on them. This outer layer is usually comprised of 2-3 paper layers Which will provide an additional amount of strength and durability to the book cover.

Choose a section of the box that is free of any seams.

With the design side down, start at a corner and peel the current gated layers away from the outside box skin

Continue to carefully separate the two layers. Take your time.

Work the separation of layers so that it becomes parallel to the lines of corrugation. After you have a few inches you can roll the two surfaces away from each other. A Thick dowel or other long thin cylinder works well.

Voilà!

A

The image Above is a quick mock up to demonstrate what the final product might look like. Usually I embellished cover artwork with additional unique touches (Paint, collage, pens).

Top Reasons to make your own Sketchbooks

Early on in my art journey, I used these:

Old School, store purchased with slight personal embelleshments

Now I use these:

New school : a cornucopia of unique, customized sketchbooks

Why the change? There are so many excellent reasons to make your own sketchbooks:

1. Simple – Making simple sketchbooks is incredibly easy. You can spend more time, money and energy crafting more complex books if you want to, but creating a basic moleskine-esqe sketchbook can take as few as 15 minutes:
   • For pages, fold 10 pages of computer paper in half.
   • For the cover, cut and fold a cereal box or old manilla folder (or even a piece of watercolor paper) into the same size as the folded pages
   • Nest the pages inside each other and insert into the folded cover
   • With a pushpin or large embroidering needle poke 3 pairs of holes all the way through the pages and cover.
   • Starting on the outside top of the spin, sew the cover and pages together with waxed dental floss by weaving in and out of the 6 holes. Once you exit through the bottom hole, weave back up through the holes and tie the floss off at the top. Done!
   • Bonus tip: To prevent dog-earing of the pages, I cut of the corners at a 45º angle or use a corner punch.
2. Inexpensive – You likely have most, if not all of the components you need right now. All it takes is the time to produce a book.
3. Free stuff is everywhere – You’d be surprised what you start to notice in the way of free materials once you begin creating your own books. Recycling opens up a world of possibilities without you needing to spend a dime. There us so much beautifully designed stuff going into landfills everyday: used wrapping paper, packing paper, cereal boxes, binder plastic, fast food and grocery bags, junk mail, fabric from old clothes or furniture…and that’s just the tip of the iceberg!
4. Innovation– Try different materials for your cover. Collage cover designs from junk mail and other found materials. Try unique closures. Fold pages with pockets for inserting loose drawings. Add a built-in cardboard easel to the back of your book or elastic loops to hold you drawing arsenal. Wrestling with recycled art surfaces (like old manilla envelopes) can also push your art in ways that store-purchased books won’t.
5. Recreation– it can be so fun and relaxing to design and produce a one-of-a-kind piece of art…that you will then fill with more art!
6. Customizable sizes– You can make a sketchbook to suit your particular needs and desires: portrait, landscape, square, triangle, comic strip-narrow, tall and vertical, double-fold out. The possibilities are endless.
7. Customizable drawing surfaces- You can use whatever material for your book that you want, or mix your book to include several different kinds of paper. You can even prepare your pages in advance before you bind them. For example, coat pages with gesso to facilitate acrylic paint or to give your pencils and charcoal more to grip. With multiple signatures (groups of folded paper sewn together to make a thicker book) you can have sketch paper up front for character and environment design and bristol board at the back to draw and ink your final comic pages.
8. Psychology– Ever have “blank page syndrome”? Fill your page with recycled newsprint or previously crumpled brown packing paper. Does a thick 150 page sketchbook intimidate you? Make a skinny book that you can complete in a week. Have trouble always having a sketchbook on hand when you’re out and about? Make a quarter-pager to keep in your pocket with a ballpoint pen or mechanical pencil. You can build a book to meet your psychological needs as well as your artistic purposes.
9. Community- Sketchbooks are fun to give to friends, family and even strangers. They facilitate sketch crawls and are less intimidating (especially when colorful) when sketching in public. They can also be great conversation pieces.
10. Chronology– since each book is potentially unique, they serve as visual reminders of projects (make a dedicated all-in-one book for a particular project) or phases in your artistic development. You can even include a system on the cover to help you find a particular completed book once it’s resting on your shelf.

There are more reasons, but I think I’ve made my point. If you’d like to see some close up samples of sketchbooks I’ve made, see below.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

More Niji Waterbrush Mods

I have a small arsenal of Niji water brush pens. They’re my favorites because I can disassemble the tip easily for cleaning. This is necessary because I use ink instead of just water. Depending on the type of ink I use, the brush can get clogged pretty quickly.

In a previous post, I demonstrated how to disassemble and clean the water brush tip. 

The only thing about the Niji brush that I haven’t liked was that the handle is difficult to fill. It has a “flow gate” which traps The liquid stored in the handle when you unscrew the tip. This is handy if you want to have pre-mixed colors, inks, or extra pre-filled water for watercolors, but is not conducive to filling quickly if you are using A water or ink container with a narrow neck. 

The answer to this problem turns out to be quite simple.

By inserting a X-Acto or snap-off blade at the scene between the black “flow gate” and the handle, you can gently pry off this leaving a large circular hole. Why didn’t I tried this before? It’s probably a holdover from when I had only one water brush and I was afraid to damage the handle.





They say that necessity is the mother of invention. A second mod proves this is true. I had lost the cap for one of my pens. That’s not good for many reasons, but especially if there is waterproof ink in the pen.

Here’s a way to make a pen cap from a Uni ball pen (no, I am not a monster. I used a cap from a defunct pen).

I determined the height of the replacement cape based on the height of an actual Niji cap, and marked the cut line using a Elmers paint pen. Then it’s just a matter of cutting very carefully and straw, keeping as straight as possible with a snap-off knife blade pulled out a bit farther than normal. The new Is actually a tighter fit in the original and the pocket “clip” is better by far.

Shoestring Seriography

I really enjoy screenprints and the process of making. However, the emulsion method used by professional screen printers is technical, time-consuming and toxic not to mention expensive.

There are several methods that are available which are cheaper, easier and, while having their own limitations, offer more immediate results. For the two colors I printed in this post, the red design was printed using a paper stencil while the blue design was made by painting Mod Podge directly onto the screen.

A large embroidery hoop that I acquired served as a impromptu screen frame. for a few dollars I purchased some organdy material which can be pulled reasonably tight in the embroidery hoop. The quality of the screen may not be as fine as professional grade, but it does the trick for down and dirty home printing. I topped off my rough-and-tumble painting kit with a “squeegee” made from a plastic vertical blind but I had cut up into short spatula shapes.

Some tips:

• you can alter the viscosity of your acrylic paint with ModPodge.
• pull your screen material as tight as you can
• wider squeegees are best for consistent paint/ink layering.
• thinner stencil material is preferable since the thickness of the paper determines the thickness of the paint layer. I think I will try newsprint next time. I may lose some durability but it may be worth it.
• using the stencil method along with the PVA glue paint on method in tandem my produce great results. The painted method allows you to have floating shapes inside other shapes. The stencil I can’t do that very well. However you can get much crisper edges with the stencil.

UPDATE
I made some rectangular screens with some cheap picture frames. I used some old stockings as the screen material for one of them. The result is a mesh that is more rough, but workable for the paper stencil method or large designs with PVA glue. I suspected that the plastic “squeegee” that I had been using was causing air bubbles. I tried using a Styrofoam tray as an alternative since it is rounded and softer. Over time I think the screen will wear the styrofoam down, but it seemed to help.

I also tried Mylar from a deflated ballon for stencil material. It is at least as thin as newsprint and it is more durable. It tends to curl so is probably not suitable for fine detail, but adhered well to the screen once the initial “ink” was applied.

Paperback to Hardcover

I’ve been using a perfect bound paperback ESV for the last year or two. I like it but it is getting worn. To extend the life I decided to turn it into a hardback edition by treating the original book as the book block.

I created a cover as usual from three pieces of chip board (scavenged from a three ring binder) and an old AAA map.

To make the book block, I glued a fabric tape to the back of the original spine, glued on a piece of card stock as a spine stiffener, and attached a head and a tail band.

To add strength to the Union of the book block and cover, I completely glued the end papers to the front and back covers.

Fun tip: paint a layer of Mod Podge on your book cover and lay a piece of plastic film over it. Burnish the film so it makes complete contact with the wet glue and leave it to dry. When it’s completely dry (don’t rush!), remove the film and your book cover will have a glossy finish.

Good Book Rescue

This was an interesting challenge. A friend had a Bible with years of notes but the spine was damaged. Since the end papers and Front and back covers were intact, I did not want to start from scratch. Using an old map, some thin chipboard and good old mod podge, I created a reinforced spine with “clamps” to attach the whole thing to the existing front and back cover. I will probably add some endpapers just to make the thing extra durable.

I rushed a little bit, which accounts for the cool script typography wrapping around the edge of the book. Lesson learned.