As a member of BEST (the Bookbinding Etsy Street Team), I’m always inspired by handmade book sellers on Etsy…I love exploring their processes and materials used, and how they combine all those skills. To the untrained eye, the books may all look the same, but there are subtle differences in how paper, binding, stitching, etc. is used.

I definitely still have a lot to improve on in making handmade books.

Here are some of my favorite handmade books and their sellers…

Winged Creature Cutout DAY PLANNER – Imoss
These planners actually have pages printed with lines, dates, months…The cover is made of bookcloth and a paper cut-out of the bird. Honestly in the photo, I thought it was all printed paper. WOW

chair. book. – paintedfishstudio
This chair reminds me of a chair from one of Van Gogh’s paintings…This book actually uses the accordion fold technique, where a long piece of paper is folded several times to literally create an accordion. It’s a great way to display whatever you’ve written/drawn on the pages because the covers are sturdy enough.

Trivial Pursuit Recycled Journal – goodbyecitylife
This journal uses the board from a Trivial Pursuit game. Recycled covers are awesome because buying regular bookbinding board can get expensive. I love that she uses recycled paper for the inside as well. The color scheme is consistent.

Flourish Book No. 1 – SeaLemon
This book uses the Japanese stab stitch, so the front cover only opens to a 90 degree angle…without tearing the paper of course. It’s a good stitch to keep all the paper together, and it’s called a “stab stitch” because you literally stab the needle through the pages. I like to use an awl if I need to make a hole through several pieces of paper. The colors and design for the cover are awesome.

Smitten – Blank beaded journal pink with dots – BookgirlsStudio
I’m very intrigued with this type of binding…It looks like the seller threaded beads through the thread when it was being bound. It uses the long stitch which is a very good method to sew sections of paper together. The thread is being sewn in and out of the paper, so by using the beads, it looks like it stops the thread from cutting into the paper (which I have done by accident, because if you pull the thread too hard and the paper is too thin, you can rip the thread right through).

Handbound Notebook – Elephants and Owls - paperlion
My favorite stitch…the coptic stitch. I think it’s a really fun stitch, and it leaves the spine visible so you can really see the skill of the bookbinder. Coptic stitching also lets you lie the book flat, however it does make it a little more fragile than a regular bound book. But really, if you’re going to buy a handmade book, it would make senses to take care of it.

Recycle Bin Book – erinzam
This tiny book also uses the coptic stitch, but as you can see, it doesn’t need many holes. The previous book used 4-5 holes, while this one only needs 2. I think the ribbon is a lovely idea, and I think this would be great to carry in your purse. It’s the perfect “list-making” size! And recyclable paper is always good to use.

As you can tell, the combinations of stitching, colors, papers, materials are endless. Which means there’s always something new to try!