Sometimes people tell me they are afraid to use a handmade book. I tell them I make them to be used and that I think they only grow more interesting and beautiful with use.
This is a book I made for myself about six years ago.
The covers are made from an old book. They were already quite worn.
I inset a vintage photograph into the front cover. The owl is original to the old book covers.
:: sketches, left, illustration, right ::
I dyed the pages with black walnut dye and bound six the original illustrations into the new text block. Those are some cat sketches.
A friend gave me this stamp of a fox, which I glued to the back cover.
There's no wrong way to use a handmade book. You can use it for your grocery lists or your diary, your notes for class or your drawings, and if you like, you can put it on a shelf and look at it when it pleases you. Anything you do is right.