Making Pocket Journals with Judith Dollar
Judith shares examples of her folded pocket journals and demonstrates how you can create one for yourself with limited materials and a big imagination!
By The Art Toolkit Team
This is a recording from our live demo, Making Pocket Journals, with urban sketcher Judith Dollar on March 12th, 2025. Urban sketching and small supplies go hand in hand, and the most important tool to have close by is paper!
In this demo, Judith shares examples of her folded pocket journals and demonstrates how to create one for yourself. This homemade journal style can be made from any paper, and the covers are fully customizable, inviting you to get crafty with mixed media or collaging. Make a pocket journal for a weekend trip, or give one as a gift!
Recommended Supplies
For this demo, Judith recommends having the following supplies on hand:
Pocket folding paper: A single piece of 11" x 15" paper—a grocery bag works great.
A text-weight paper: You will want something that is not too thin but not too thick.
Accordion-fold insert: A single 11" x 14" sheet of mixed media paper: Judith uses Canson Mixed media 98lb.
Misc: A ruler, a glue stick, scissors, and a bone-folder (but a spoon also works!) The folds typically hold, so glue isn’t necessary, but you can always add some!
Tidbits From the Demo
Pocket journals are excellent for telling a sequential story, like a little timeline of a weekend or a short travel experience. Judith has been exploring this style for a year and a half and already has a bin filled with pocket journals.
As you explore shops, cafés, and museums, keep your eyes peeled for stores with fun prints in their advertising, like bakeries, candy shops, and craft stores. Tourist information offices and museum gift shops are filled with maps and interesting printed materials. Paper placemats from diners are a perfect size for a cover paper.
If the paper you choose for your cover is a little floppy / light, you can cut out a rectangle of light cardboard, like from a cereal box, and tuck it in one of the pockets to provide extra support. For example, wrapping paper makes a great cover, though it may need some structure added to keep it from flopping: wrapping paper often has a grid printed on the reverse, which is handy for making neat folds.
Fill front pockets with stickers, business cards, patches, tickets, labels, and even watercolor palettes—just secure them with a rubber band!
Tip: Judith told us, don’t be shy to ask stores or cafés for a sticker as a keepsake! She visited a coffee shop and observed a cute sticker they used to seal their bags of beans: “there’s roll of stickers back on the counter—just ask them for a sticker!”
Judith’s Everyday Art Supplies
Paints: Art Toolkit Pocket Palette with Daniel Smith watercolors
Pens and Pencils: Sailor Fude nib pen in a Dave Dollar Custom Pen body (her husband makes them) filled with Sailor Carbon; Faber-Castell 14B Pitt Graphite Matt pencil; White gel pen; Art Graph graphite tin; Platinum Ink; Pencil sharpener
Paintbrush: Water brushes
Paper: A home-made Pocket Journal with accordion insert, Stillman & Birn sketchbooks, or anything that’s convenient and handy!
About Judith
Judith Butler Dollar is a graphic designer and artist who has been an urban sketcher since discovering the online community in 2010. Today, she is an admin for Urban Sketchers Houston and recently joined the global Urban Sketchers’ North American Regional Membership team.
Most known for observational on-location drawings, Judith has traveled extensively, capturing both urban and rural settings from around the world. She’s passionate about all things urban sketching and has filled more than 100 sketchbooks over the last 14 years with sketches from her travels and everyday life. When she isn’t working on graphic design work, she teaches small workshops on making and filling sketch journals and other art projects.
Judith Dollar
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