As the Christmas decorations came down and were packed away for another year, we found ourselves wondering whether we could give some of the waste material a new life beyond simply chucking it in the recycling bin. We took a pile of festive wrapping paper and a few Christmas cards out to the bindery to see what we could do! With a few sheets of A4 printer paper, a needle and thread, and something to cut with, we were able to make a cheerful set of little paper notebooks that will be useful...

It is always tricky for me to decide whether bookbinding is a craft or an art. I have had many discussions with people over the years at craft fairs and on courses about exactly what bookbinding is. I have always said it is a craft and yet my work has been exhibited in Art exhibitions. It is certainly a creative endeavour as whilst making a new book you are constantly making aesthetic and creative decisions. The late Sir Ken Robinson ( https://www.sirkenrobinson.com/) described...

I was approached by a client to ask about binding together all of the editions of these societies' journals into a matching set of volumes. Each volume is composed of two years, each with its own individually printed journal. A few of the journals collected had already been bound, some in cloth and some in half leather but they all needed pulling apart in order to ensure that all of the volumes matched. Most of them came as uncut printers copies whereby the printer had folded the sheets and...