I've always been fairly dissatisfied with store bought ones, only because I don't tend to prefer carrying around something that seemed very 'sterile' and not like me. Even if you tape something over the cover it didn't always feel like 'mine'. By making my own sketch books I really feel connected and proud of it, even if the drawings inside aren't that great x)
I ordered all this paper from DickBlick.com
Their prices I found to be good, and they had a pretty good selection of decorative and hand made papers. They took me in with a free shipping offer if I ordered over a certain amount, which was nice because some of the paper I ordered was over sized for normal shipping options.
I got taken in by a listing for 1lb of assorted paper for $9, thinking it might be nice to put inside the covers, and some of them will definitely work! There's a good assortment of weights and colors.
I bought some smaller packs of hand made paper to use for pages. They have the natural deckle edge that hand made paper has, I think it will give the books a ton of character! It's cotton paper, and came in so many colors I couldn't help but but a few different kinds, I'm excited to try making a book with black pages. They were about $2.50 for a pack of five.
These are all the large sheets of paper that I got. The big pages are so expensive, but almost incomparable to the small ones. The prints are just great, some using especially thick ink that it's almost like it's embossed. My photo doesn't show it well, but the teal and blue papers have gold paint on them and shines in the light.
I like it all so much, I don't even feel like I want to use it for anything x)
