Making Books

I love books. I don’t think that’s a surprise to really anyone who reads this blog for more than three seconds. I’ve always loved books. I remember the afternoon sunlight coming in from my window and making patterns on my book as I sat in the floor “reading” as a little kid. When I was a kindergartner and I got to go across the hallway to Mrs. Church’s first grade for reading time, I thought I was the hottest of stuff. I shelved books in my school library in fifth and sixth grades. My part time job in high school was shelving books at the public library. I worked for the director of the library at my university. (I later married his son, but I worked for Dr. Granade before I met my partner.) For a while when we lived in Durham, I contemplated getting a Masters of Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill because I hated my advertising job and I was RIGHT there and the program was so good.

When I started making art and I realized I could make books, it was if the stars aligned just for me. Of course I was going to make books. Because books have been my constant companions my whole life. Unlocking the “make your own” part of my brain was a big deal then and I think maybe it’s an even bigger deal now.

I wanted to make my own

Making books is a whole other animal from the books we read that you can get from a bookstore. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of book forms beyond what you are used to handling for pleasure reading or class reading. Book structures range from variations on what you expect book forms to be to esoteric, origami like things that become art in and of themself.

I bought Alisa Golden’s Making Handmade Books: 100+ Bindings, Structures, and Forms years ago as a reference and since then I’ve been steadily making the forms found in this book as prototypes. The beauty of this book is that the skills build on each other so if you start working from the beginning, the books are easier and get progressively harder the deeper you go. In the early days, I jumped around in the book, making things that caught my attention. But then a few years ago, I decided to start from the beginning and make small prototypes of each one. I’ve made it to the middle of Chapter 3.

I’ve taken SO MANY book binding classes and workshops. My all time favorite piece of advice was from Kiala Givehand in one online workshop where she said to approach making a new form for the first time as making a prototype. So you have permission for the first one to be a mess but the second one you make will be better. I think about that literally every time I start a new book form.

Making the thing again and again

There is freedom in working on the same idea over and over. When I’m struggling to find something to do, making a book is always a great option. It keeps my hands busy and lets my mind clear amidst the concentration of making the prototype. Oftentimes, book construction combines so many of my areas of interest: choosing paper, cutting, origami, sewing, and/or gluing things together. At the end I have a book form that I can fill up with art, give away, or sell.

I forget sometimes how many books I’ve made. Looking through my images for the gallery above, I spotted a handful that I didn’t even remember making. That’s the way it goes when you make so many and then give away, trade, or sell them.

My YouTube channel has flip throughs of many of the finished art books you see above in one playlist. I also have a short playlist of bookmaking tutorials.

Ebb and flow

Sometime last year I was feeling particularity burnt out on working inside all of these books I make. It was causing me a lot of resistance. So I gave myself permission to put away all the books that I had been working in. I gave myself permission to not finish the ones I was in progress on and I gave myself permission to work on other things as long as I needed to. It was the exact right thing to do.

In 2024 I made 21 books so I set a goal to make 30 books in 2025 and fell woefully short. I was out of the studio a lot in 2025 but I’d also given myself permission to not make books. This is an illustration of the ebb and flow of the work for sure.

I’ve made five books (and a ton of one page zines!) this year already and I have to say, looking through the Making Handmade Books book to prep for this post makes me want to make something new. Empty books are full of possibilities and it’s the lure of those possibilities that always bring me back to it.

If you want to get started

If you’d like to try your hand at making a book, you can check out this video. I recommend just doing the 3-hole pamphlet stitch which starts just after the 3 minute mark. I love Bitter Melon Bindery’s videos so if you are looking to get into making books, her channel a great place to get started. Sea Lemon also has a huge variety of book making video tutorials. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used her double needle coptic stitch bookbinding tutorial!

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