The beginning of 2011 coincides with the beginning of a new sketch book for me. Coincidentally, this IS book number 11 for me (I began numbering them as an architectural student back in 1996). Normally, the beginning of a new sketchbook is an auspicious event all of on its own.

There are so many parallels between a new sketchbook and the start of a New Year. The pages are empty but full of potential. If I’m honest, their is a hesitation – it is perfect in its minimal state. Crisp, unworn, uncreased. Do I dare to begin? How shall I make the first mark?

I don’t start on the first page with a scrawl or a scratchy sketch. Oh no! The beginning demands more ceremony. More reverence. More respect. I start with the cover. For this 11th sketch book, starting in the year 2011 I am going to use some images I have been carrying around with me for over 10 years.

Every now and again I find them tucked away, look at them, am captivated by how an image so still can embody so much movement, and then I put them away. I’ve been saving them without knowing when or where they would be used. Well, now they are going to take pride of place on the cover of my sketchbook. I will see them everyday that I use this book. I will carry them with me on travels near and far. They will be with me for maybe over a year, well until sketchbook 12 needs to take centre stage.

The back cover is a contrast of stillness and the words from a beautiful Emily Dickinson poem – the words of which have become etched on my soul. I have a number of plans for a necklace inspired by this poem.

A new sketchbook and a New Year is often a time to take stock, to summarise where we have been so that we can make decisions on where to go next. It is an important time. I will often go through my stash of horded images – you know the ones – the postcards you can’t bear to throw away, the colour and pattern that stops you in your tracks when you are flipping through a magazine and images of past work.

These are a record of your influences, the trends of the year just passed. They are an important background, and set the scene when we embark on new projects and designs.

This studio space, stuck in on page 6, represents how I feel before I go through the stash of images, before I collate all the little ancillary sketches hastily scribbled on other papers. There is clutter. But you can see the bones of the space are amazing! All it needs is a bit of organisation, a bit of a detox…

This flotsam and jetsam I gather together and make collages – these pages set the barometer for change by charting the territory just covered.

Ideas get forgotten. I am fully aware that I there are some days when there are so many ideas and possibilities that I can’t hope to develop and produce designs from all of them. The start of new year, the start of a new sketchbook is a good time to just do a bit of a stock take. Review all those past ideas in case there were a few that needed to be taken further. Or even forgotten ones that might be worthy of a second chance. All the clutter and chatter is silenced – it has been evaluated anew. And now we can move on.

This is often the time I begin to start cutting into my new sketchbook. I’ll cut a window, a window on to the next page. Just so I can focus on a colour, a texture, an idea. It’s a window onto the future if you will.

I’m on page 10 now and I still haven’t put pen to paper. But the spell of the pristine sketchbook has been broken. I don’t have to worry about the first sketch being show worthy or important just because it is on the first page. I’ve passed that. I’ve warmed up and I’m ready to run.

I can’t wait to get started – right, time for some scratchy sketches!

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You can find out more about Cari-Jane on her blog, Hybrid Handmade.