Interactive Sketchbook Page

Added: 2026-06-05

[00:00:00]Hello. We are going to do what I think is like one of the most fun pages I've ever dreamt up. I've been really intrigued by this idea of interactive sketchbook pages. And a lot of you probably don't know what that is, but it is just like a kids popup book. It's like a book that you can interact with by pulling tabs or opening flaps or spinning wheels. like there are any number of interactive elements that you can add to your art. So, I've been kind of down a rabbit hole on this. I've been experimenting with a lot of different things and I thought it would be fun to show you one of my favorites, which is just like a very simple pull tab. I said this was going to be a sketchbook page and we are going to put it in our sketchbook, but we're actually going to do the bulk of the work just on watercolor paper. So, this book happens to be a size A5. This is one of the books in my shop. And this is my brand of watercolor paper, also in an A5, so it's going to fit pretty perfectly into the book. We're going to use maybe two sheets of this. It's It probably won't be like two full sheets. I've got two brushes, a size eight and a size 10.

[00:01:15]These are round brushes. And then I've got a pencil to make my drawing. I've got a pen to do some outlining. This is a 6. And I have a white gel pen to do just a little bit of extra. These I know sometimes they don't work. It is just the nature of the white ink. Uh but this is a Uniball Signo gel pen. And this is what I found to be the most reliable of the unreliable white pens. You're also going to need some scissors and some glue. I'm going to attempt to do this with a glue stick. I don't know if it's going to work. I don't know if the glue stick will be gluey enough, but we'll find out. And if not, we are adaptable.

[00:01:56]I'm also going to use a little bit of tape to give me a nice border. And of course, watercolor paints. So, this is my essential palette. If you don't have these particular paints, it's going to be fine. All right, let's make it. Okay, so to start with, we're going to take two sheets of our paper.

[00:02:16]uh because we're going to do most of this on our extra sheets and then we're going to put it into the book to sort of hide the mechanics of what we're gonna do. So, the idea here is that we're going to do a giraffe. It's going to be so cute because we're going to pull his head. We're going to pull his head and his neck is going to grow out of his shirt. It's going to be adorable. I can't wait. Okay. So, the the this part the this part of the paper is going to be his shirt. And then we're going to do a second part that's going to be his head and his neck. This might be something that you want to watch before you before you attempt it on your own because it might make more sense that way. Or if not, I mean, just go for it.

[00:03:05]Just just go for it. Um, so do I want to draw his head first or do I want to draw his clothing first? I think I'm going to start with his head. I've done a bunch of tutorials on giraffes. They're really easy because this is going to be super cartoony. So, we're going to start with I'm going to start with a an oval. This is going to be his mouth. And then I'm going to do a line sort of angled up from that on either side.

[00:03:39]And then we've got ears. So the ears sort of come out on the side.

[00:03:46]They kind of come to a point.

[00:03:51]It looks a little weird right at the moment. I think it'll be fine. Uh and then he's got the the cones on the top or the horns. I don't know what it is. A U in the center and then bring it down to that ear. We can kind of refine it a little bit. I think maybe I think maybe I made my my lines a little too angled. So, I'll bring those down just a little bit more. But I think this I think this looks pretty good. So, then his neck is going to come down like this. And I want him to have a collared shirt. So he's like business business uh giraffe. So we're going to do a Vshape.

[00:04:41]And then it's going to kind of come down on either side. So we've kind of made an M there, like a very wide M. And now coming down from the middle, we're just going to add those. Add the collar and connect it. And then the tie, the tie. Oh, he's wearing a tie. I forgot to tell you. He's wearing a tie. His neck tie is going to come down like this.

[00:05:09]And then another another line out. And then it will just be like a straight a straight line down. So, we're making this a very long tie. This is the basic giraffe head part of our of our interactive page. Now, I know because I've already planned this out and I wanted to be able to tell you this in advance, but we want his neck to be like from from the top of the collar to the base. We want it to be about 4 in. So this this is about 4 in. And part of the mechanism of the of the pull tab is that when you pull it out from the slot that it sits in, you want it to have a stopper. And so that just means that there's gonna be like a a tab at the bottom that's going to prevent it from from coming all the way out of that slot. And again, I promise this is this is going to make sense once you see it all come together. So I just added a rectangle down to that down to the end of the tie.

[00:06:33]And then we're going to cut down here from each of the collars.

[00:06:44]So that is going to be our cut line. So basically we're going to cut all the way around here and then around his head shape. So that is the next step.

[00:06:58]I will tell you that all of these interactive pages that I've done so far, I'm just going to cut around him to make him easier to cut out. Um, all of the interactive pages that I have made like on my own um have taken some like engineering. like it's taken a little bit of figuring it out to actually get it to work in the way that I want it to work. So, if you're interested in this kind of page and sort of doing this kind of page on your own, you do have to have some patience and some um like I guess you have to really want to do it because it it does take a little bit of a little bit of effort. There are a lot of tutorials online for this kind of thing where people have like me have already figured it out for you. So that's another option too is to just find an online tutorial um where somebody can kind of guide you while you're first learning how to do it. I did a few online tutorials as I was sort of trying to trying to figure it out. And then um I had the idea to do a giraffe with a sweater where his head and neck came out of the sweater. And Sophie was here, my son's girlfriend was here, and I was showing her and she said, "Oh, what if he had on a tie?" And I was like, "That's that's it. That's what we got to figure out." So, I spent a little bit of time just, you know, working this out so that I could get it the way that I wanted it. Um, and it turns out so cute. So, just know this isn't the first time. This isn't the first time I've I've done this. Now that we've got him cut out, we want to add his shirt. And so, we got we have to leave a little bit of space down here for glue.

[00:08:58]um because we have to glue the bottom so that when so that the pull tab doesn't slide all the way through. So we have to leave a little bit of space at the bottom there. And then his shirt is going to start kind of like at the base of the of the knot of the tie.

[00:09:25]Let's see. That looks a little bit a little bit wonky.

[00:09:36]It's going to be about about like that.

[00:09:43]So, this is his this is the shirt.

[00:09:51]And I think that I think that looks good. Maybe we need to narrow this.

[00:10:01]We're gonna narrow this just a little so that it's not quite as wide. There we go.

[00:10:14]Okay. I think that's I think that's good. It's going to be so cute. I promise. I promise it will be. It will be so cute. So, we are going to go ahead and we're going to make our cut. So, this right here from here to here is where we have to make the slot to put the to put the head. And it's easiest if you have an Xacto knife, but I know that most of you probably don't. So, I made sure that I checked to see if this would work instead. So, I'm just going to use this as my That's where I did it. That's where I tested it as my base. And then I'm just going to use my scissors.

[00:11:01]And I'm going to just make a make a cut this way. Be very careful doing this. Be very careful.

[00:11:12]So now I've got like a little I've got a little slot there where I can put my put my giraffe. So we're just going to test it. So the pull tab can just fold in on itself like this. And then hopefully Oh, I think we didn't make it quite wide enough.

[00:11:35]We did not. We did not make it quite wide enough. So that's okay.

[00:11:45]This is where like a little bit of um of trial and error comes in. So if it's not quite wide enough, we have two choices. I guess we could make the make this a little bit wider or we can trim in this part a little bit.

[00:12:09]and just make this a little bit narrower and see. Let's see if that does it. Okay. So, we fold these in.

[00:12:29]Fold fold our little tabs in for our stopper. And let's see.

[00:12:35]It's still slightly It's still slightly too wide. So, I need to make it I need to make it a little bit bigger.

[00:12:50]So, I'm just going to expand this out a little bit that way and that way.

[00:13:02]So, there's there's my slot. Now, let's see.

[00:13:10]Okay, now we've got it. So, now if we if we undo the little flaps down here. So, this is going to stop the pulling action.

[00:13:24]Just like that. Let me put my lines back in here.

[00:13:37]And now we want to make sure that we add in the tie. So the tie the tie needs to come down to the bottom and be the same width as the tie on the giraffe that we drew. And then it'll come down to a point because that's what ties do. I think I might have made that a little bit aggressive that point.

[00:14:06]There we go. That's That's a little better. Okay. Are you getting the vision? So So this is this is what it looks like before you pull the tab. And then you pull the tab and isn't that gross? It's so fun. Okay. Okay. I love it. So, we're going to take him back out of our slot.

[00:14:32]And now we can we can paint we can paint our our cute Mr. Giraffe. I'm going to make his base this uh medium yellow color. And I might I might end up with some of it on my desk. I think that's fine. I'm not too worried about that. I probably should have erased my pencil lines a little bit. Uh but I did not. I did not. So, it's fine. We're going to use some pen to do some outlining. Um so, I think it's it's okay. So, his neck is going to be yellow, too. So, there's his there's his face.

[00:15:16]And I don't want to paint the shirt because if I paint the shirt right now, it's going to run into that yellow. So, I can go ahead and paint the tie.

[00:15:28]And I'm going to do that in red.

[00:15:32]So, and you could do you could do your tie in whatever color you like. Does not have to be the same as mine ever.

[00:15:44]So, we're just gonna we're just going to paint this in.

[00:15:54]And doesn't really have to go all the way to the bottom because of this the stopper, but we'll take it we'll take it all the way down there.

[00:16:10]So now I can come over here and then just color in or paint in the the red.

[00:16:40]I'm going to go ahead and tape this down to my art board at this point so that I can paint in the background and have the border.

[00:16:55]I'm going to make my background red. And I think I'm going to switch to my size 10 brush.

[00:17:03]so that I can cover a little bit more ground.

[00:17:09]And I'm just going to quickly, very quickly put in the background.

[00:17:17]I am not worried about this being um super even. I just I don't really care for this. Uh it's fine if it's if it's a little bit splotchy.

[00:17:35]But I don't want to paint over his shirt. So I am going to paint around I am going to paint around the shirt.

[00:18:07]So, at this point, we need to let this dry and then we can go in and paint the shirt. Okay, these are dry. So, we can go ahead and paint the shirt. And I'm going to do mine in ultramarine.

[00:18:19]Ultramarine blue. So, I'm just gonna I'm just going to paint this in. I'm living dangerously painting this over the other painting. I should probably I should probably not do that.

[00:18:33]I just get really excited about this kind of stuff and then I I that is how you make mistakes like that where you end up with a big drip or whatever. But paint and learn, I suppose, right?

[00:18:51]So, the reason we did this, we're doing this after we cut it out, is because I wanted to be able to see the exact like size for planning out the the other section.

[00:19:04]We could have painted them in two stages. We could have painted this one, let it dry, cut it out, then drawn this one and painted it and let it dry. I just for the purposes of this I did didn't necessarily want to do that. So that's an option if you if you would prefer to if you would prefer to do it that way. You definitely could do it that way.

[00:19:31]So now I'm going to paint in his shirt on this side. You know what? I'm going to take this off because I want him to come all the way down to the bottom.

[00:19:42]So, and I can already tell that my I did not press my tape down very well and I have a big splotch underneath my underneath my tape, but that's fine. I can I can show you what I do about that. Um, and we might not be able to like totally fix it, but that's okay. That is okay.

[00:20:09]This is a This is just a fun page, so I am not gonna stress about it.

[00:20:18]If it was like a very like serious painting that I really wanted to be perfect, I would have probably spent more time taping it down and wouldn't have that issue uh in the first place. But but here we are. And that's okay. That is okay.

[00:20:36]Here's his shirt on that side. And the other thing I want to do, I just was thinking about it. I think I want to darken up this area of his mouth. I'm going to use a little bit of reddish brown mixed with that yellow.

[00:21:00]And I'm just going to put that in this circle. Is that his muzzle? Is that what you would call that? Do giraffes have muzzles? I don't know. Probably not.

[00:21:20]We are going to let that dry. We can go ahead and pull the tape off of this because the background the background is dry.

[00:21:30]And we'll see what we can do about that that mistake.

[00:21:36]which I do feel like it was me and not the tape. Uh because everything else is fine. I think I just had like a little bubble there that I didn't catch. So when this happens, when you get a big splotch like that, what I try to do is I rinse my brush off really well. And this is red, so it's going to be like this is going to be hard. It's going to be hard, guys. It's okay. Um I wet it. I wet it with my brush.

[00:22:08]I get my paper towel.

[00:22:12]And then I get my paper towel and I just sort of dab at it. So you can see that that picked up a little bit of it.

[00:22:27]We're going to wet it a little bit more.

[00:22:34]Yeah, I think this is probably going to be one where um because it's red, it's going to be really hard to lift that color out.

[00:22:54]But it's okay. I have another I have another couple of solutions.

[00:23:08]It is lightening a bit.

[00:23:11]My other solution is I take a little bit of magic eraser that I keep and so I just wet that in my in my water. And now we're going to just see if we can lift a little bit of that with the magic eraser.

[00:23:31]You just have to be super careful that you don't like make a hole. You see it is lifting it. Um make a hole in your paper which is definitely possible because it's very abrasive.

[00:23:48]Okay. You also don't want to you don't want to do too much.

[00:23:53]That helped it a little bit. I'm gonna let it I'm gonna let that dry and then I'll show you one one other trick. Um, so we're going to set this to the side so that that little that little spot can dry. And then we want to make sure that our our shirt is dry before we go in with our pen details. So, as long as your shirt's dry, you can go ahead and grab your pen and we're just going to add add the add the features. So, I'm going to do some little the little furry parts up at the top.

[00:24:34]And maybe maybe I'm going to let's see.

[00:24:39]Let's do like some lines here. We might try to outline it a little bit. It's kind of hard because we already cut it out, but we can add a little bit of a little bit of outline. and cover up those pencil marks just a bit.

[00:25:04]And then I think they always have like Don't they always have furry ears?

[00:25:09]Giraffes, I'm pretty sure.

[00:25:25]Make sure this part is fully dry before you do this. You don't you don't want to use your pens on top of wet paint.

[00:25:34]That is not uh great for them.

[00:25:44]And then I'm just outlining everything.

[00:25:56]We have to give him eyes. So, let's do one, two. Oh my gosh, he's so cute. He just got like 10 times cuter. And then he's got to have a nostril there and there.

[00:26:15]And then I love to do like the little side smile like that. Okay. Uh eyebrows.

[00:26:30]We can go back to this one.

[00:26:33]This one's all dry, too. And I'm just going to outline Outline the shirt and outline the tie.

[00:26:52]And then I'm going to add an outline to my I'm going to add a border to my background.

[00:27:00]And I just got off the border. That's fine.

[00:27:22]So, this actually does not look that bad to me. Um, but we are going to use our white gel pen. We're gonna do we're gonna use our white gel pen to add the little highlights to his to his eyes.

[00:27:41]And we can also use our white gel pen on on the side here and just kind of cover that last little bit of red up with our gel pen.

[00:27:58]So, that's pretty that's a pretty good cover up for that big red splotch. Oh, I'm not I'm not too mad about about that. Um, I also want to do polka dots on his tie, I think, cuz his tie is a little boring, and he is not boring. He is not a boring giraffe.

[00:28:22]You could put whatever kind of design you want on the tie or you could do a sweater. Like, you know, that was my original idea. Like I said, um you could totally do a sweater if you're not into a tie or you want to make maybe you want to make a lady giraffe. She could be wearing a tie, too. But, uh you could do whatever you want to do.

[00:28:57]That looks really good. This is super picky. This is super picky of me, but I feel like I got the highlights in his eyes just like a little too big. So, I'm just going to make them a little smaller with my pen.

[00:29:14]I'm really tempted to give him glasses.

[00:29:17]Should I give him glasses?

[00:29:20]I think they'd have to be they'd probably would they need to be round or could we make them like Okay, I'm going to do it.

[00:29:39]Rectangle glasses.

[00:29:45]I just had to go get new glasses and the glass the lady at the glasses place was like, "You need something fun. Your glasses are super boring." So, I have new glasses coming.

[00:29:56]Be on the lookout for that.

[00:30:02]They're Oh, I just got off my line.

[00:30:04]Okay, we're making them thicker.

[00:30:07]Um, they're not just black. So, she I told her she was going to have to baby step me. Baby step me out away from my boring glasses. So, that's what we're trying to do.

[00:30:22]Oh, he's very cute. He is very cute. All right. So, now for the fun part. We get to put him in his We get to put him in his in his shirt. So, just remember we we folded the flaps in. Now you can un unfold them.

[00:30:49]There he is. Oh my gosh, it's so cute.

[00:30:53]And then you pull it and the little stopper stops it from from going too far.

[00:31:02]Really really cute. The last thing that we're going to do is we are going to um put it in our book.

[00:31:13]So, this, like I said, is going to fit fairly well inside inside my book. Um, I do want to round the corners just a little bit so that it they're not hanging off. So, I'm going to do that.

[00:31:34]For some reason, I have to turn it this way, otherwise I will mess it up. Let's see.

[00:31:45]That's pretty close. Pretty close. I feel like I might need to trim just like a tiny little bit off this edge.

[00:32:11]He makes me laugh. Okay.

[00:32:15]It's so cute. It's so cute. All right.

[00:32:19]We got to glue him in. So, I'm going to glue I'm going to glue around the edges because we need this to be able to move.

[00:32:28]So, I'm just going to glue down here and around around the edge.

[00:32:37]I think we could we could also glue up here without without messing up our mechanism.

[00:32:55]And then we just put it down.

[00:33:02]Oh my gosh. I think he's so fun.

[00:33:08]Is it going to actually stick? That's the question. Will the glue stick actually stick? I think it will if I like once I just close the book and let it sit for a minute. But if not, if it feels like your your page is not going to stick, you could definitely use a different kind of glue on this. You could use some regular school glue. But I think our giraffe is finished. Before we go, I thought I'd show you two others that I did on my own. The one is an owl that opens its wings. And I've seen lots of creators do tutorials for this one.

[00:33:44]And then the last one is just a standard popup. It's really easy to do. I hope you guys had as much fun with this as I did. I mean, that is delightful.

[00:33:55]It does take a little bit of practice, a little bit of engineering, and like figuring it out, but it's it's so fun.

[00:34:03]And I feel like it adds like a different thing to my creative brain when I have to do something that uses a little bit of engineering. I love it. I hope you did, too. I hope you had fun with it.

[00:34:15]And maybe you got some ideas for adding interactive elements to your sketchbook.

[00:34:20]Bye.