Tutorial: How to Make a Thumbnail Sketchbook From a Single Sheet of Paper

A Teeny Tiny Sketchbook for Your Teeny Tiny Thumbnail Sketches

Materials Needed:

• A single sheet of A4, or letter sized paper.

• Scrap piece of colored card stock or paper for the cover.

• Stapler or awl, needle and thread

• (Optional) bone folder for creasing

• (Optional) cutting mat and utility knife

Step 1: Fold the paper into 16 sections.

Start by folding the paper in half one way, then the other way so you have 4 sections. Next, fold the paper from one edge to the center crease. Repeat this on all sides so you end up with 16 total sections as shown below.

Step 2: Split the paper in half

I find its easier to use the crease to tear the sheet along the straight line, but you could also use the utility knife or scissors for these next steps!

Step 3: Tear the sections apart so you’re left with 8 sheets that you can fold in half

Step 4: Make the booklet

Gather all the sheets into a stack and fold them in half. For the cover I used a scrap piece of paper I had left over from another project. A cover is nice to have, but if you don’t have any color paper don’t sweat it! A paper grocery bag, card stock, even a cut up cereal box could be used instead. The sketchbook will also function just fine without a cover at all, you’ll just need to be a little gentler with it.

Whatever material you are using for the cover, cut or tear it down to size and fold it around the outside of your booklet.

Step 5: Bind your pages

Depending on what materials you have on hand you can either staple or sew your pages together.

My paper is pretty thick and I was too lazy to go look for the staple gun (though I really want to test that out because I think it could work really well!) so I ended up sewing mine together.

However, if I were using thinner paper or less sheets I would use the regular stapler because it’s so quick and easy.

If I was stapling I would put two staples in on either end of the booklet. Just make sure you put something under your paper like a cutting mat or some spare cardboard (or both!) to protect your tabletop.

To sew the binding, you can do however many stitches you want but here’s what mine looked like:

I used an awl to poke the holes and a needle and thread from my bookbinding kit but I think for a simple book like this you could get away with any string you have on hand!

Step 6: Profit!

And by profit, I do mean…enjoy your brand new teeny tiny sketchbook for your teeny tiny sketches!

It’s so small it can probably fit into even the meager pockets women’s jeans are cursed with! Probably. This sketchbook is small but so are those dang pockets.

Here are some thumbnails sketches I’ve made in mine:

Very demure, very mindful.

As you can see, my thumbnail sketches are done very quickly and roughly. Yours might be different, that’s okay! There’s no wrong way to do them.

Because mine are super loose and sketchy I don’t like to take up a lot of space in my sketchbook for them. I usually draw them on loose leaf paper or in my “thinking on paper” sketchbook which is essentially just a much larger version of this!

Naturally, because I live to invent new methods of procrastinating, I couldn’t just do that. No, I needed to procrasti-bookbind and make this sketchbook first!

But that’s it, that’s definitely the only procrastinating I did. Definitely.

*sigh*

Fine! You caught me.

I also made a thumbnail templates in InDesign so I could easily thumbnail in Procreate. In multiple sizes.

But that’s it! Really! After that I did a whole page of nice thumbnails. See?

You can also see my helpful, totally necessary not at all superfluous, template.

Jim’s not buying it 🤷‍♀️, are you?

---

And with that, we’ll wrap up this tutorial that didn’t take any detours at all.

I hope you enjoyed! Let me know if you make a teeny, tiny sketchbook of your own. More importantly, let me know if you have pockets big enough for it 😂.