Book #112

Green Binding No. 2

It is Earth Day today! Do something good for the planet.

Today's book is another one made entirely from repurposed materials. Some time ago, I had to shred some documents that had been bound with these plastic coils. So I saved the plastic coils to see if I could use them again. Cut down to this smaller size, they work perfectly fine for a small notebook. The cover is made from a coffee cup that I flattened and trimmed. The pages are cut from paper salvaged from the blue bin. All materials repurposed and transformed into a handy little notebook. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Happy Earth Day

So I've really blown my New Year's Resolution this month but let me get back on track today, celebrating Earth Day, with some journals I made using all recycled and repurposed materials. These are hardcovers, each with an exposed spine and chain stitch binding.


The paper for the pages in these journals is 100% recycled. The board used for the covers is all scrap board that would have been destined for land fill: chip board, eska board, and some pressed cardboard from the back of a large sketchbook. The decorative papers on the covers are pictures torn from magazines. Each cover image is created by combining two different pictures that were torn into strips. Click the photo to make it bigger if you want a better look at the images.

Celebrating Earth Day (wtih free stuff)!

April 22nd is Earth Day! In recognition of Earth Day, I am giving away free eco-friendly journals with any order from my Etsy or Artfire shops for the rest of this week (so, until midnight on Friday, April 23rd). Eco-friendly journals are ones that I have made entirely with materials that would have been otherwise destined for landfill. There are actually two ways you could win something from me: 1. Any purchase from MyHandboundBooks will receive a free eco-book automatically! 2. Leave a comment here telling me what you are doing to celebrate Earth Day. I'll randomly select one person's comment to win an eco-notebook too! (Make sure you leave your email address or link to contact information so that I can contact you if you win!) Edit April 24: This giveaway is closed. The winner! Congratulations to Pegg, the winner of my Earth Day giveaway! I had 15 comments to pick from, and I used random.org to generate a random number and it picked 10, and Pegg was lucky commenter number 10! Thank you to everyone who left comments here telling me about Earth Day activities, and thanks to those who made purchases this week; they got free eco-books too.

April 22 is Earth Day

Happy Earth Day! Since 1970, April 22nd has been recognized as Earth Day, meant to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment. It is now recognized as an international event in over 170 countries. If you are in Canada, check out Earth Day events in your area on theEarth Day Canada site. I have been making different kinds of recycled books lately. I save a lot of boxes from food packaging because some of them have fun pictures and designs and sometimes I'll get a box that is an interesting shape... I save a lot of stuff, can you imagine how my little bookbinding studio must look with all this stuff in there? the room is very crowded... And if I'm going to save it then I also need to use it for something! So I just made a bunch of small notebooks using these saved boxes - two different styles. Some fan notebooks, bound with a single screw post in the corner. And a few stab-bound notebooks where most of the pages are box tops and side panels so the end that is sewn had a pre-existing crease. This gives all the pages a decent hinge allowing the notebook to open quite well. You can also use boxes to make mailers, i.e. sturdy envelopes. This is particularly useful for people like me who sell stuff online and always have to find/buy shipping materials. If you want to see how it's easily done, there is a quick tutorial for making a granola box mailer on the TCET blog.

Happy Earth Day

The Trans Canada Etsy Team has done a series of articles on their blog to feature individual eco-conscious Etsy sellers in recognition of Earth Day. All are fabulous Canadian artists and crafters and I'm honoured to be included here with them. You can read the individual articles here:

• Minouette
• MyHandboundBooks
• Colleen Baran
• FiveForty
• RikRak
• TanisAlexis

Thank you Morgen, for preparing these articles. Morgen is also very eco-conscious and has two Etsy shops: InkySpider and KootSac.