 Hey guys, all right, so I'm gonna show you how I recently made something That led to this bag I'll explain in just a minute So I recently went on a trip and right before I left and I'm like talking maybe 48 hours before I left I Saw a video by Robin Mead art And I will link her it was on Instagram and I'll link it down below and I only saw the one video where she was coloring something in With some markers. I don't know what they were By the way, if you're watching this, which I doubt but if you are I'd love to know what those markers were And it gave me the idea to create my own coloring book To take with me on vacation now You of course could buy a book, but I really Every time I try to take a big bulky art supplies with me on vacation. I always regret it This last time was no different the one thing I loved that I brought with me was my own DIY little small coloring book and Creating that coloring book did lead to something else, which I'll share with you in this video, but I Only created a quick one really small one. This is it and I took with me with me on vacation And I finished it so quickly it turned out to be great On and off the plane. I Colored it in With highlighter markers. I'll show you a little bit later the exact stuff I brought with me But I loved it so much my only problem with it was it was too small like I really wish had wished I brought more pages with me But I also knew I loved it and I wanted to do this again So I came home and I've since made two I think this is the second one of these now hers was accordion style. So she was pulling it out this is accordion style too, but I've taped all the pages together and I'm going to show you how I made this and This is just black and white and then you color it in what you could use pencil you could use marker You could use paint pens crayons, whatever Works for you, but first you have to create the book somebody out there probably Sells something like this. That's not too detailed. I have these on the cover of this one These are some coloring postcards. I bought it in a state sale quite a long wise ways ago And they're pretty and all I would never sit and color these in because that's just for me way too detailed and frustrating and would just drive me up the wall to even try This is much more therapeutic for me. I don't Travel super well. Flying is not my favorite thing. So I I can't sleep on planes I tend to get sick when I do so I need something to Keep me awake and keep me occupied. Keep me calm and this is perfect So I'm going to show you how I made this now the first thing you're gonna need is of course some big pieces of paper this is Let's see about 12 by About 12 by 18 and it's about 70 pound drawing paper Um, you're gonna need two sheets for the book And I always do one sheet on top of the other sheet So depending on what pens you're using to do this with Um, I've been using the hu hu markers. They do bleed through to the bottom sheet I also used um Fiber castell pit pen and that worked great too, but use what you have you could use a sharpie It's gonna sharpie definitely a little bleed through to the back. So make sure you have something underneath and um Don't worry about it because we're not going to be worried about the backside I worried about it with this first one and then later realized when I got home Yeah, I'm not worried and I'll show you why so the first thing you're going to do is just take your big piece of paper And you're just going to draw some abstracted shapes Enough to fill up the paper I have this little like piece of scrap to put under the edge because you do want it to go all the way to the edge It can be squares. It can be circles It can be whatever speaks to you turn on some music And just start drawing With your pen now the one thing you do want to do is make sure that your shapes are not too big um, you want them to Be a shape that's going to be fun to color in And a size that's going to be fun to color in and not one that's going to drive you crazy because it's too small At least in at least for me So i'm going to Do this I'm going to fast forward through doing it and i'm going to do it twice So you want two of these piece of papers? And i'll be right back. Okay, when you have What you think is done go back And for me, I just like to make sure none of the spaces are too big But also not um that they're not too small Okay, once you have the one done Do it again. So we need two Okay, one more time For the second page, I usually always use the under paper And I use these black marks from the first paper To give me a clue about where to put the lines For the next one So Anyway, let's do it twice Okay, once you have two of them You're going to make we're going to make a basic accordion book So in order to do that First of all, I need my box cutter So i'm going to fold the paper in half lengthwise Make a crease Then fold it in half the other way Make a crease And then fold either short end into that middle crease that you just made Lining up the edges as best as you can Make another crease And do the same thing on the other side Now with all the drawing it may be hard to see but You can probably see it on the back how we've creased the paper So now we're going to take we're going to leave this this whole part We're going to cut down the center crease from here All the way out to the end Need my There we go my ruler my straight edge. Okay, so I'm going to find that Center crease I'll line my straight edge up Take an exacto blade So then you have this Okay, so then You just refold it Those of you who have been making journals for a while are familiar with this technique And then you have a coloring book all the start of one. So we're going to do that to the other one Same thing I do have some more trips coming up. So I need more colored books Fold it the other way. Okay, and then Cut it So then we're going to tape these two Together to make more pages than we're in the original book But we're also going to tape this part together. So we don't have to look at that To make it more of a Book that opens up and when I did the cover on this one, I did it in a hurry This isn't the way you should do the cover, but I'll show you that in just a second Okay, so the first thing we're going to do is put double stick tape on all of these pages Including these outside ones, which will be attached to the cover and If you're like me and you have stashes of double-sided tape from scrapbooking days and it's Not gone bad Use it Otherwise these days they sell it at different kinds of dollar stores all over the place. So two pieces of tapes are usually enough And I just usually go ahead and put the tape on all of it. I don't remove the Backing paper just yet And because we're taping it together together. That's why I said it doesn't matter How much it goes through or not? Because we're not gonna you're not gonna end up seeing it anyways. It doesn't matter And this is really I like this drawing paper. It's from amazon I bought a big bulk of it like quite a while ago now um But it does go through With some markers not everything but just make sure that you have a um Like I said a scrap piece of paper or another piece of paper Or something underneath where you're working Usually when i'm doing this I turn on some background music or You know something so This is going to go to here and that's going to be like that. So these two are going to be the outside So on the outside, I'm going to put actually three pieces of tape to hold the cover on And then you want to find some scrap Cardstock scrap chipboard On the first one I would still use that material, but I wouldn't do it the way I did it. Um, that was an old file folder That's the old file folder will work Could use just about anything you could use product packaging Okay, before we start taping stuff together Let's cut the cover. So for the cover. I'm going to use an old piece of chipboard. This is actually the back of a paper pad and the book measures like four and three quarters inches by Six So I usually cut like five by six and a quarter inches Um two of them this this is Do it this way Because yeah, that's 12. Okay, so Let's do five Let's do six and a quarter Sometimes my math gets mixed up But you know, okay, so I'm gonna Guestimate six and a quarter. I'm gonna do six plus. I'm gonna leave a little extra right there I'm gonna score it with my nut knife box cutter thing Once you get a few scores in there. You don't really need the ruler anymore Just keep your fingers out of the way This is easier done with a box cutter than it is with any cutting Implement you may have now we're gonna need two of them that are Five inches double check the size Yep, that's about right I'm gonna pick two of these postcards out of this Lost ocean post card coloring postcard thing that I But I don't know why I bought it but anyway That one's cute And again, you know, if I'm traveling around somewhere and You know, I doubt I'm gonna feel the impulse to color these in but I guess you never know It's awful teeny tiny But it makes an interesting cover, but you will notice that you can't really center this Very well On the chipboard. So I always cut like a quarter inch off Yep, that's better. That's much better. Okay Again with the double stick tape We put double stick tape on the back of the Covers the postcards these things I usually put three Okay Time for assembly. Okay. First thing we're going to do is put these on the covers And the hardest thing about the double stick tape sometimes is pulling the backing paper off I'm not um a perfectionist Hmm, but if you are you're probably gonna want to measure and make some Registration marks or something. I just eyeball it I don't really stick it all the way down until I get it on there. So one cover And you could leave the covers blank and you could if you are taking this traveling You could cover it with stickers from where you're going or something like that But this works for me Okay, now with the pages So you want to before you assemble the pages make sure they're opening The same way the two sections because I've done this Where I've taped the whole thing together and then realized they were like this don't do that So you want to make sure they're this way Once you have them that way Skip over the one with a three because we know that goes to the cover And then start peeling off your tape and then sticking your pages together And then this is where you're going to stick the other book to this book I don't care that my pages aren't perfectly folded and even Once you have them stuck together though, if that does bug you you can give it a trim on your paper trimmer Before you put the covers on It doesn't really bug me Okay, and I I'm usually like very off So that's fine Now the original artist I saw this from on instagram again whose instagram will be linked down below Um, I think I didn't see much about how she created it. The video I saw was her coloring it in And I later learned that I think she used india ink. Um Okay, that's kind of way off. Is that going to bug me though? Maybe I just said I wasn't a perfectionist and I I do like the spine to be sort of lined up. It doesn't have to be perfect tape More tape probably don't do what I just did you're probably going to rip it if you do I didn't but I mean I didn't have it stuck down very well I do like the spine to be sort of lined up. It's better. It's not perfect, but it's better It doesn't have to again. It doesn't have to be perfect You can go back in with tape if you have edges that don't quite make it or Are sticking up. Oh, but you can also just go in with a glue stick. How does that look pretty good? I do think I ripped this just a little bit. So let's see if we can fix it a little bit. It needs trimming Let's see Okay, not perfect, but again, I don't need it to be okay. So we're going to take our two covers And okay Do one side and then we'll do the other side again just like Before I just kind of eyeball it Okay, and then Peel the tape on the other side and the easiest ways to stand them up like this I think and then you can line them up and then you have A diy coloring book of which I made three of them And I have this so this is bad this bag is in an upcoming video Um, and it is big enough to hold a few of these notebooks Um, I have one of these in here already, but the other one I have in here Yeah, um is this one. So I took this idea And There's such a thing out there as reverse coloring books Which are basically pages with just color blobs on them and you draw Around the blobs or you draw what you see which isn't honestly is an art therapy thing And when I'm traveling and flying I already said I don't like flying so I'm usually stressed And so I thought I'd use the same technique. I did to do these Only do my own reverse coloring book. So I created with the same paper I used watercolor paints and inks to create just a sheet full of Painting marks and blobs and then I cut them up And made my own reverse coloring book, which is I now have in here Now it takes more time to do this because you have to wait for paper to the paper to dry and stuff Um, I just got the whole paper wet and then I started dropping paint on there There's you could do this any way that you like to do just abstract painting marks, but it's another way to do One of these that I think is really interesting Um, the bag also fits a couple other notebooks including one for just for writing if I need to do some writing Um, when I took this one with me on vacation. I only used highlighter pens And this bag holds all my highlighter pens plus one big or one black pen And that would be used for the reverse coloring book And I just took a variety of highlighter markers This bag will roll up like this And sit next to me on the plane seat While I'm here And I'm coloring and that works perfectly for me. So I hope this gives you any idea of something that you can do Try it. I find it very relaxing and Beneficial and I still can get something creative in when I'm traveling without bringing my whole art studio with me which is really beyond the Scope of things I really wanted to be doing anymore I like taking my art with me, but I don't want to take the whole art room I can also fit a small watercolor journal in this bag, which I have one in here And a small set of watercolor pans and one water brush So I have the coloring books or if I want to do a quick sketch and painting of something I can do that too And this whole thing just can fit in my backpack It's much lighter to carry on than some of the other things I've carried in the past Long past and recent past. So anyway Think about it. Make yourself some diy coloring books. Go give the instagram channel A shout out show her some love. It was a great idea And um, yeah, do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later. Bye guys