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Sonia Vico | Marbled Notebooks

posted by POP Members February 16, 2022

London-based printmaker Sonia Vico has repurposed some old Colorama photography backdrops turning them into packs of 2 x A6 notebooks. Aiming to work as sustainably as possible, Sonia tries to work as much as she can with found or salvage materials, applying fine art to finished products. The notebooks are made of 50 pages of Seawhite Brighton 140gsm Cupcycling recycled paper with covers that have been handprinted using the Japanese marbling technique Suminagashi.

Sonia originally moved to London with the idea of working as a photographer, but after years working as a freelance photographer assistant and junior photographer, she began to find it hard to find joy in the jobs she was doing. “Without really knowing what it was”, she enrolled in an Art and Design Foundation where she learned that she could make a portfolio and then go to university. Now, turning 30 this year, Sonia is about to graduate from London College of Communication with a Graphic and Media Design qualification.

During the lockdowns, like most, she found herself having more free time which was often spent looking around her house. In this free time she started doing some DIY marbling printing with shaving foam and acrylic, experimenting with different marbling ink brands and more traditional ways. As a result, Sonia ended up with a lot of different test patterns which she started to use as the background for her well-renowned screen printed typographic posters. She designed a small line of products (greeting cards, notebooks, and prints) for the Not Just a Shop product competition. Following this success she has been making prints and other products for her Etsy shop, craft markets, and independent shops.


The notebook collection was born from Sonia’s passion for sustainability. Sonia describes; “I get inspired by finding out how I can reuse some materials. I find a massive joy when I find a new purpose for some project leftover materials, I make something out of them and I release them.” With plenty of photography backdrop paper, a want to practice Suminagashi and test how using the Seawhite Cupcycling paper would be received, the notebook project came to life.

Although a lot of her time and energy is currently going into her studies, Sonia’s next project involves self-publishing a book with her dissertation alongside a photography project that she has been developing over the last few years.

Each pack contains one royal blue notebook and either an orange, yellow, green, or pink edition. Available to purchase via @_soniavico.

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