What's Old is New Again: Create Your Own Upcycled Journal

Unleash your inner bookbinder! Transform forgotten books into unique journals bursting with character, personalized treasures ready to capture your stories.

Let’s create new journals from old books! (Or even new books).

Using a hard-covered book, you will learn how to successfully deconstruct it by removing the text block.

We will then reinforce the spine and create signatures (groups of papers to form the pages).The signatures are not just any old papers: I have a large selection of carefully curated book pages, maps, sheet music, yearbook photos, and more for you to choose from. And of course you might want to bring some of your own to use or share.

Using a variety of bookbinding tools, I will show you how to stitch in the signatures, and create the inside covers.

Choose a book whose cover you like, as we will not be covering the covers, but rather leaving them as they are, or decorating them.

Once the books are created, I will share a few of my favorite ways to embellish the pages, including pockets, tip-ins, tuck spots, and more.

Kat Kirby                                         kat4clay@gmail.com                                                   katkirby.com