Book of Cards & Gift Wrap Idea!

Here are a couple cute ideas from {Design Editor}. A cool idea of creating a book of cards received at a birthday or shower that makes for a wonderful keepsake and a great way to wrap the gift that is both stylish and functional.

Arranging Books by Color

Not only did I post this for how ridiculously cool it looks and the work that probably went into making it look this good - but really the main reason was for the quote that I found on {Apartment Therapy} that went along with it - pretty inspirational:

"...organizing his books by color allows him to discover new and unexpected relationships between books he knows well already. When two unrelated books are forced to occupy the same shelf simply because of their spine color, the shelver is asked to think about whether they have ideas to share between them. Perhaps, the designers of these chromatically-related books saw something in the books' content that even their authors did not. Maybe their ideals share a common hue?"
– Rob Giampietro, {On Arranging Books by Color}

I think similar ideals can be taken into consideration in our day to day life - perhaps finding commonalities in people/places you may have never though would...? I denno - something to think about.

Lacuna Wooden Books

I have always loved things made of wood. I love the fact that each piece is unique and has individual characteristics. I was really impressed when I came across {Lacuna} books with wooden covers. Hana is from Portugal and creates these books for those who appreciate handmade objects with soul and history. She uses antique wood and recycled paper - bound together using the coptic binding method to form journals, albums, or sketchbooks. She often works from damaged pieces of antique furniture to form the covers of the books.

The cool thing is that this morning when I was checking out Lacuna's Etsy shop there were over 20 books and I just checked it again - just a few hours later - there are only 2 left!

A New Binding Technique

So, I decided to try out a new way of binding photo albums and it worked out great! It was
pretty time consuming, but that may have been because it was my first time - of course it was
fun nonetheless! I have also posted some of the other cover styles I am in the process of making. I am selling them if anyone is interested, but really I just wanted to show the way of binding I learned:) In addition to the the books, I also made some boxes from scratch. They are meant to be a set with the album (same style or one that complements it), but really they can be used
for anything!

Make Books All Day!

If I could, I would seriously make books all day long. There is something incredibly therapeutic about it that I cannot put into words. The first book here is a journal I had made for myself a while back and the second is a photo album for a friend. Both are done using the perfect binding method, with the beautiful recycled paper and book cloth I picked up from Paper Source, but if you are in San Luis Obispo, I recommend checking out the great finds at {Paper Sky}., which is pictured above - courtesy of {Cameron Ingalls Inc.} - a local photographer.