Sketchbook fright!

In May I first heard about the The sketchbook project 2018  (that you can take part in too till Jan 2018!) on a facebook post (thank you fellow SBSer). I decided this would be an ideal project to do so I bought the pack. After several delays that had me wondering if I had signed up for a scam, it arrived in June and I was so excited I tweeted about my lovely pack and did...

The pack /goodie bag

... absolutely nothing apart from pick it up from time to time, coo and put it back. 

The suggested themes for 2018

Eventually, after a month or two, I wrote the suggested themes down on the back to try and make a start. I also leafed through existing pages to see how they display the books and what seemed to work and what didn't.  I found out a bit more about  The Sketchbook project/Brooklyn Arts Library -a crowdfunded museum that runs several challenges. I wondered if I should have taken part in those instead. There's also a blog.

I did NOTHING else in the book - musing from time to time about the themes (which are merely suggestions that I am not bound by). 

It's September now, two other sketchbooks have been filled and a new one started. I've taken part in two sketching events run by the Reader Sketchers group and I've also taken part in two SketchbookSkool kourses ('Let's Make a Map' and Urban sketching). Still, nothing in this one.

Eventually, today, I gave up and sacrificed the back page to a sample page so I could see which tools I could use (and which I couldn't)

What to avoid:

• Water causes the paper to buckle (not only on the page but also pages behind them). 
• Watercolour markers with water leak into the back and the page behind. 
• Promarkers leak into the back. 

In summary: So nothing with water and nothing with Promarkers.

What works?

• Sharpies, Posca markers and bingo dabbers all work
• Pitt pens work, as do biros, pigma markers (sent with pack) and lamy pen and ink (with VERY LITTLE water) work just fine
• Watercolour brushes, watercolour pens and watercolour pencils (without water) add intense colours. 
• Stamps work just fine.
• Crayons work as you woud expect. There ate traces left of crayoyn on the pages.

Why so scared?
It's normal to be daunted of the blank page in a new sketchbook but I think the reason why this one in particular seemed scary was that it would be on show as a single PIECE of work so I didn't want to waste anything in it. Ordinarily, I am happy to scribble as each sketch is a single drawing that I can choose to ignore or adapt. I'm also fine with people leafing through my sketchbooks, and as mentioned, had completed two since then.

If there's one thing that may have helped, it would have been a couple of sample pages (so you could see what happened to the page behind) as it's not inexpensive to take part in the project.

Now to work out what to do and how to incorporate the buckled pages AND make another start.
After all, I have till Feb/March 2018 (allowing postage time).

Any tips gratefully received.