Book binding!

I am a great fan of dying arts. Weaving, spinning yarn, dying yarn, making paper. They're all lovely. "The deader the better" the old saying would go if it was one. My favorite dying art of all is book binding. I worship physical, non-electronic, paper-and-ink books. I write them, I buy them, I make them. I make them for myself, for friends and family, for beta readers. Sometimes, like with the book below, I do super fancy stuff with the spine, and I draw patterns on the covers, and I put rhinestones on because sparkly. 

I love to get fancy with books, like with this exposed spine that shows off the stitching and all the pretty papers inside:

I'm so fanatical about books that having them published in mass-produced paperback just isn't good enough sometimes. So I do some fancy, special book fold printing on my computer, stitch and glue it all together, and bind it up with fancy papers, since every novel deserves to be dolled up using real, artsy techniques instead of just machine printing that falls apart after more than two reads: 

Below are some books I have made. Some are blank, some are lined, some are hard cover versions of things writer pals or I have written, some are just little booklets.

And below are pictures showing the process of book binding, step by step, for one of the fancy rhinestone journals.

So, there's a little window into my favorite crafty hobby! I hope you liked it! And if you want a journal, sketch book, fancy copy of a book you wrote, or anything else along those lines, you just let me know! I welcome any opportunity to make a book. Prices vary a lot based on materials, but it varies from approximately $30 for a blank journal to $65ish for a printed novel.