A few weekends ago I heard about One Bag, a site dedicated to the art of travelling with one piece of carry-on luggage. Having had lots of practise, I’ve got quite good at packing light (if I do say so myself) and I was chuffed to see that the site recommends a lot of the ploys I’d already worked out. Some of the tips were new to me, especially some of the product recommendations. Iron-free fast drying men’s shirts and ‘travel jeans’? Yes, please!
This drive to lighten the load got stuck in my psyche, and next thing I knew I was applying it to my handbag. I looked at the things I cart around with new eyes. The most obvious unnecessary weight was my sketchbook. I’m carrying around a big wad of paper when I’m only ever going to fill one or two pages at a time. So why not just carry around a few pages and replace them as needed? Of course, I’d need a cover for support… suddenly I had my first bookbinding project post-tour.
First, the paper. I bought a ream of multi-purpose paper for life drawing a few months back. Ideally, I’d make one signature of paper out of each sheet. I got cutting and folding and got a nice long sketchbook shape.
After considering a few materials for the cover, including leather and suede, I realised they were just going to make it heavier. So I decided to use plain grey board support card. A bit boring, but I could decorate it. Then I remembered my alphabet stamps…
The spine? Good old duct/fabric tape. The binding? A piece of elastic.
Voila! A basic single signature sketchbook that I could refill when used then, when I had a number of sketched-upon signatures, I could bind them into a nicer cover.
Except for one problem. I weighed my old spiral bound sketchbook (100 grams), then the new one (90 grams) and was disappointed to find I hadn’t reduced much weight in my bag at all. So I repeated the whole process, cutting the paper into smaller proportions and using thinner card. And weighed it.
60 grams. That’s better.
And then, because I had the tools and materials at hand, I started on one of my Projects for 2011: the certificate portfolio:
I’m so glad you posted the OneBag site. I was so bummed out by the amount of stuff that I took on my recent vacation to Key West. I didn’t need half that junk. I sure didn’t need 6 pair of flipflop, 3 of which I left behind for my daughter. My next trip to my brother’s house for a 4 day weekend resulted in me only taking a Day Trip sized backpack. I like the idea of packing clothing in two colors so that they all mix and match. Brilliant.