Treasure Bookmaking: Crafting Handmade Sustainable Journals

By Natasa Marinkovic

Divine Diary DIYs for the Innovative Crafter

#1 Best Seller in Book Making & Binding and Scrapbooking

With journal making projects, book binding techniques, and journal prompts, this Treasure Book Making guide has everything you need. Get ready to create personal journals by hand easily—without any extra book-binding tools!

An affordable craft. Hobbies tend to require a big investment, but Author Natasa Marinkovic, creator of popular YouTube channel Treasure Books, focuses on upcycling the available materials around us. Learn how to make beautiful journals—without purchasing book-binding tools, use what you have! With the things you have at home, create projects that are both useful and beautiful. 

Fall into the world of book binding. This junk-journaling-how-to gives readers all of the details on how to make a book through step-by-step creative projects that will save you space and get rid of house clutter. This diary DIY is the ultimate space for your creativity to bloom and grow! 

Inside, you'll find:

• Illustrations and tips to jumpstart your creativity on DIY books 
• Easy-to-follow instructions to structure and make a book for journaling and scrap keeping 
• Lists of accessible materials to use—such as cereal boxes, scraps of paper, and everyday items like buttons and more

If you enjoyed learning how to craft a book in Making Handmade Books, Hand Bookbinding, or journaling books like My Soul Pages, you’ll love Treasure Book Making.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781684812127

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the magical world of Treasure Books! I would like to introduce you to this world with a story. Thirty years ago, as a refugee child with barely enough food to eat, having paper was a luxury. At times, I didn’t even have access to a single sheet of paper, let alone other basic crafting materials such as coloured pencils, paints, glue, or magazines.

Then one day, my mum was given the previous year’s calendar which had flip-chart-style pages that were blank on the back. Glorious, empty, blank paper full of possibilities! And that is how my love and obsession with paper began.

I cherished that calendar, and I found creative ways to use the blank pages. With homemade glue made from flour and water, I made collages using leaves and flowers.

This is how I learned to be resourceful and creative and reuse, recycle, and upcycle whatever I had at my disposal. I never felt deprived; in fact, I felt a sense of fulfilment from being so thrifty with my possessions. It became a passion of mine to explore how I could make the most out of what I had, and this mindset has stayed with me ever since.

I have many fond memories of thriftiness from those days, and one that stands out is the doll my mum made for me. She used a deflated ball for the head, old stockings filled with rags for the arms and legs, and an old pillow for the torso. To complete the doll’s features, she drew the eyes and lips, and the result was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was a gigantic doll, and I was incredibly proud of both the doll and my mum. This doll was truly special to me, and I will always cherish this memory as a reminder of the creativity and resourcefulness of my mother.

This kind of thriftiness and appreciation for handmade things stayed with me throughout my whole life. Perhaps you can relate?

Ever since those days, I have been creative in one form or another, exploring various forms of artistic expression, such as making jewellery, knitting, and creating natural beauty products, but the love of paper has always remained.

I stumbled upon junk journals and the craft of making handmade books almost by chance, and I have been absolutely smitten since that first moment. This craft marries my love of paper with my love of upcycling and making something beautiful out of seemingly nothing. It’s a match made in heaven, as they say. I dedicated endless hours to crafting books and experimenting with paper, making sure to work on it every day, regardless of how hectic life became. For me, this was a form of meditation and mindfulness—every moment spent creating brought me into a state of flow and deep concentration.

Fast forward nine years, and I have created and sold thousands of handmade journals, built a YouTube channel named Treasure Books where I share my knowledge and love for this craft, and my shelves are lined with the most exquisite treasure books. I have found my true passion and calling in life.

That’s why I’m excited to share my knowledge of making and using handmade books with you. I want to take you along on a journey and my wish is to inspire you and awaken the creativity within you.

In this book you will learn how to create deeply personal and beautiful handmade journals, without the need to purchase any special tools. You will be equipped with the fundamental basics of bookmaking and bookbinding, with step-by-step processes for various projects. Each project is unique and personalised, allowing you to tell your story, your way.

Every book you create, use, or share with others is an opportunity to express a piece of your unique story. With each memory, moment, and experience that you capture in your journal, you are creating a tangible record of your life’s journey. Learning how to create handmade journals is a gateway to unleashing your creativity and discovering a powerful force within you. The art of handmade books opens up a brand new way of seeing the world, where the possibilities to create are endless.

Whether you realise it or not, you possess a creative force within you that can be unleashed through the art of making handmade books, journaling and memory keeping.

If you need a little push to get started, don’t worry—this book will help you to tap into your creative side, and then there will be no stopping you!

So come and join me on this incredible journey where you’ll discover a world full of endless possibilities and boundless creativity that will inspire and captivate you.

Every minute of creativity is one less minute of worry and anxiety…

—Natasa Marinkovic

PART 1

WHAT’S THIS ALL

ABOUT?

WHY SUSTAINABLE

HANDMADE BOOKS?

You may be pondering the reasons why you should craft handmade books, as opposed to purchasing a pre-made, factory-produced journal from a store. This is a valid inquiry, to be sure. Purchasing a mass-produced journal can indeed be more convenient and require less time and effort than crafting a handmade book.

However, the process of creating a unique, one-of-a-kind book is more fulfilling. It allows for personalisation, sustainability, and creativity, and can establish a strong emotional connection to the finished product, all of which makes them an excellent alternative to mass-produced journals.

PERSONALISATION

One of the most significant advantages of making a journal is the ability to customise it to your liking and tailor it to your specific tastes and requirements. You have the freedom to choose materials, themes, designs, colours, paper types, binding techniques, and various other aspects of the book to fit your style and preferences. Additionally, you can control the size, number of pages, and other features of the journal.

SUSTAINABILITY

Creating handmade books is also a sustainable and cost-effective option. You most likely already have the necessary materials at home, and you can repurpose items that would otherwise end up in the landfill. This way, you can create something unique and beautiful while also reducing your environmental footprint. Adopting sustainable practices in paper crafting, such as reusing and repurposing everyday objects/items, can help reduce the negative environmental impacts of the paper industry, which is a significant contributor to global deforestation, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions.

CREATIVITY AND CONNECTION

Another benefit of crafting handmade books is the sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that comes with creating something with your personal touch, especially with repurposed materials. The process alone allows you to tap into your creativity, and thus, handmade books often have a special meaning or significance because of the time, effort, love, and care that went into making them. As a result, a stronger emotional connection is formed with the book, providing an additional incentive to use it as a sanctuary and encouraging its regular use.

What I love most about this art form is its endless possibilities. With a single concept or idea (or one project from this book), you can explore multiple variations and develop the idea in many ways, each resulting in unique and individualised creations.

You will also find that the more you create the more creative you become, and the more you will see everyday objects as potential materials for new projects! Regularly practising your creative skills through this process serves as a catalyst to maintain a connection to your artistic side.

That sense of accomplishment and being in the creative flow that comes with making something with your own two hands is impossible to find on a shelf in a department store.

REPURPOSING

JUNK

You might have heard the saying that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. This phrase is often used as a reminder and encouragement for people to consider the value of things that others may find useless or unwanted and to find creative ways of reusing or repurposing.

This book is designed to encourage you to do just that, helping you transform junk or trash into treasure through the art of bookmaking.

This is a creative journey, one that will open many new horizons.

Embarking on this journey of making sustainable handmade books is beneficial in three ways.

1. You will learn the art of bookmaking using readily available materials around the home, such as cereal boxes, magazines, junk mail envelopes, paper bags, old wallets and handbags, empty tissue boxes, and more.

This will enable you to create deeply personal and beautiful pieces of art without the need to purchase any special tools. The projects that you create can become wonderful, one-of-a-kind, unique gifts.

2. Your creativity will prosper and bloom as you learn to see everyday objects in a new light. Instead of seeing an empty tissue box as useless, you’ll envision the various potentials it holds for creating a handmade journal, a personalised tag, a card, or a pocket in a journal, among other possibilities.

Artistry and creativity are often stifled when everything is done for us, so exercising that creativity muscle will make it stronger. You will be able to create without all the specialised tools that the crafting world has to offer. Those things are wonderful to own, but a lot of people fall into the trap of thinking that they must have all the things to be creative; however, oftentimes the opposite will happen! Owning all the gadgets and all the pretty things may stifle creativity.

The saying fewer toys, more play, pertaining to children mostly, rests on the premise that, generally speaking, children with fewer toys use their imagination more during play.

I feel like this is the same for paper crafting. While it’s great to own a wide range of products and gadgets that the crafting industry has to offer, those things won’t make you creative. Being creative makes you creative.

It is the act of creating and using our imagination that helps us to develop and grow our creative skills.

3. Repurposing, reusing, and upcycling saves money, conserves natural resources, reduces your carbon footprint, and causes less pollution than recycling or making new products from virgin materials. Consider this example: by upcycling an empty cereal box into a journal, you avoid the need to purchase a new journal and the extra packaging it would have required.

By incorporating this mindset into your daily life, and applying it to other areas as well, these small actions can make a significant difference in both your wallet and the environment.

Regardless of whether you have a strong interest in sustainability or not, your actions can still have a positive impact on the planet.

Repurposing materials goes beyond simply finding a new use for something that was previously considered unwanted or junk. It allows you to grow and expand as a creative person, creating beautiful works of art while being respectful and mindful of our shared home, Earth.

Side note about hoarding: It is important to note here, that as you embark on this journey, you will start to see potential in a wide range of items that you come across. All the cereal boxes, packaging, pieces of paper, and fabric suddenly have new possibilities to be upcycled into something new. It is important to be mindful of the tendency to hoard and keep everything that you might use in the future.

To avoid falling into the trap of hoarding, it can be helpful to set limits for yourself and be selective about what you keep. Work with the space you have and only keep a reasonable number of materials. By doing so, you can more easily access and use the things you do choose to keep and avoid feeling overwhelmed by clutter—and all the possibilities!

TERMINOLOGY

DIVING INTO

THE WORLD OF

HANDMADE BOOKS

You may notice that sometimes I refer to a book as a junk journal, other times as a handmade book or an art journal, and you may wonder what the difference is between these terms.

The definitions I provide here are intended to give you a general understanding of the meaning of these terms.

A specific term can indicate how the book was made, or how the book is to be used, or it can indicate both.

For example, a handmade book can be a junk journal, an art journal, a glue book, or all three.

These terms are often interchangeable and overlap in creating the book and using it. For instance, what starts as a junk journal may evolve into a glue book that morphs into an art journal that has elements of a scrapbook.

Containing different types of journals within a specific category is difficult due to their intricate and multifaceted nature.

Therefore, before we delve into the various terms used in the world of journaling and bookmaking, I want to stress that there are no rules. Take these terms and definitions to get a general idea, and then go ahead and throw them out the window.

These definitions are meant to help you classify and organise information and to capture the broad concept of these terms, but you should feel free to interpret and use them in your own way.

HANDMADE BOOK

Just as the term suggests, a handmade book is a book that has been crafted by hand.

This can include creating the cover and signatures and binding them together, or it can involve taking an existing book and replacing the contents with your signatures while keeping the original cover (see Project #1). In either case, the finished product is considered a handmade book.

JUNK JOURNAL

This term refers to a handmade journal made from a variety of discarded materials such as cereal boxes, junk mail envelopes, magazines, old book pages, brochures, maps, paper bags, ticket stubs, and other ephemera and materials. These materials are often repurposed and used to create a unique and one-of-a-kind handmade book.

A junk journal typically has pages with different sizes and types of paper, and they often include writing space with pockets, tags, clipped-in ephemera, tuck spots for keeping personal mementoes, and many more interesting features that give the journal a unique and personalised look.

Initially, the term Junk Journal was used to describe a journal made entirely from junk materials.

However, the term has evolved and is now widely recognised and used as an umbrella term within the handmade book and journal-making community to encompass a range of journals, from those handmade with all-new materials to those made with a mix of junk and other materials.

This is likely due in part to changing trends, and the availability of kits and printables for creating junk journals.

There has been a debate within the journal-making community about how the term junk journal should be used, with some arguing that it should only be used for journals made with actual junk materials and others using it as a more general umbrella term.

Despite this debate, language evolves over time, and the term junk journal has come to encompass a wide range of handmade journals, whether made entirely from junk or not, and whether we like it or not.

I personally find treasure books more appealing than junk journals, as treasure has a more positive connotation than junk. However, despite my preference, the term junk journal has become well-established and is likely to continue evolving along with the changing trends in the handmade book and journal-making community.

ART JOURNAL

An art journal or artist journal is a book, handmade or not, that serves as a personal creative space for visual journaling. It can include a variety of media such as finished artwork, sketches, doodles, paintings, collages, and written reflections and can be created using a wide range of techniques and materials, including paint, watercolour, collage, stencilling, drawing, and mixed media.

Art journals can vary greatly in content, with some featuring a lot of writing and others consisting mainly of art and illustrations.

These journals serve different purposes for different people, with some using them as a means of self-expression or to process their emotions and others using them to document their ideas and creative projects.

Art journals tend to have thicker pages than junk journals because they are often used with wet or heavy media, such as paint or markers, that may bleed through the page.

In contrast, junk journals typically focus more on ephemera and paper, and repurposing discarded materials to create a book intended for writing and memory keeping, rather than original art and illustrations.

However, there is no strict rule that defines what makes a journal a junk journal or an art journal, and many journals incorporate elements of both.

ALTERED BOOK

Just as the term suggests, an altered book is a pre-existing book that has been modified or transformed in some way, typically into a junk journal, art journal, glue book, pocketbook, etc.

Altered books can be created by cutting, tearing, folding, collaging, painting, or otherwise altering the pages of a pre-existing book.

They can be as simple as using the book pages as a canvas on which to apply paint or other media, or as complex as creating an intricate structure such as a book sculpture or book-folding art.

The finished product may be a completely transformed version of the original book, or it may retain some of its original features and characteristics.

Altered books can be created for a variety of purposes, including as a form of personal expression, or to create a unique and one-of-a-kind work of art.

DIARY

A diary is a personal record of events, thoughts, and reflections, usually arranged in chronological order. Entries can be made daily, or as desired. Generally, diaries are used for self-reflection, processing emotions, preserving memories, and documenting life. They may include a mix of writing, drawing, and other creative media.

Any type of book, handmade or otherwise, can be used as a personal diary, and it can also be in digital form.

The terms diary and journal are often used interchangeably; however, a diary can also refer to a dated planner or organiser.

COMMONPLACE BOOK

A commonplace book is a book in which a person records quotes, excerpts from books or articles, personal reflections, observations, ideas, sketches, and any other information that they find noteworthy or memorable.

The main difference between a commonplace book and a traditional journal or diary is that it is used as a place to record information, rather than a place