Customer Reviews

How to Make Books: Fold, Cut & Stitch Your Way to a One-of-a-Kind Book

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I picked up a copy of "How To Make Books" in a bookshop recently, and I was impressed. I'm already a bookbinder and familiar with most of the projects Smith details within the book, but I whole heartedly recommend this to novices and intermediates.

Smith's hand drawn diagrams have a warmth that many technical manuals overlook, without losing explicitness. Project directions are clear and concise. Her writing has a pleasant conversational tone. And the book is just a joy to hold -- the cover is raw bookboard, embossed letters to look like letterpress and a cloth tape spine. The combination of materials is engaging and tactile. I love this book!

Since April is National Poetry Month, I'm creating a new poetry unit. I discovered the Poem in Your Pocket movement, and it dovetails nicely with my latest thrilling book discovery: How to Make Books: Fold, Cut & Stitch Your Way to a One-of-a-Kind Book, by Esther K. Smith. This book would have changed my life when I sponsored the school literary magazine; it still may change my life. Smith calls the first book an instant book, and to me, it is a paper folding miracle. Using an 8 ½ x 11 inch piece of white paper, Smith shows readers how to make eight folds and one cut to have a six page miniature "zine." No glue. No stitching. The best part? It uses images from only one side of the piece of paper, so feel free to Xerox the content and fold away for cheap and darling mass production. Amazing. One of the big components of teaching writing pedagogy is publication, and this technique makes it easy and satisfying to reach that point. The book has ideas to grow on, too. Just looking at it fosters a love of books...

Love How to Make Books. I'm fairly new to bookmaking but passionate. I have several books on how to make books and had vowed to buy no more, because--except for the older, more traditional books--they were beginning to all look alike. But while recovering from foot surgery (and away from my drafting board but with loads of time), I acquired How to Make Books. Clearly different from the rest. Within 3 hours of getting this book, I had produced an instant accordion, rhyming alphabet book for my great niece. She loves it. This was 2 weeks ago. I'm currently going through this book for the 4th or 5th time. Helping me keep my sanity during a lengthy recovery.

How to Make Books: Fold, Cut & Stitch Your Way to a One-of-a-Kind Book

Book Artists and Teachers who use book binding in your classroom, this is THE how-to book you have been waiting for. The directions are simple and easy, even for complex structures. The images are gargeous. This book with it's davey board cover and bold red font is a collector's item. Every page tells a story. Illustrations are funky and fun. This is one How-to book that you will use again and again.

This is a beautiful book with many ideas for anyone to learn how to make simple books with great ideas. Visually very appealing with the excellent choice of typography. The gear gift idea for anyone with an artist in heart. Enjoy.

I have acquired several books over the years purporting to show how to make one's own books. And while they were often pretty and even artistically inspiring, none of them ever made me feel that I had sufficient skill to actually make a book. I would leaf through them and think, "Wow, these are neat...but I can't do that. Where would I get this stuff? What's a signature, anyway?"

Then I saw this book, and thought, "Aww, what the heck, even if I don't make a book, this one is so gorgeous that I can't leave it in the store."

I read the first bit the Friday night after I brought it home, and Saturday morning started folding and tearing and stamping and painting, and - ta da! - a pile of little instant books! Thrilling!

Over the course of the next two weeks I went crazy on the long-stitched food box books. Now six weeks have passed and I have stacks of folded signatures tucked all over the house relaxing, a fine selection of threads and a frenzy for book creation.

This is an inspirational volume, beautifully designed, engagingly written, and a very inviting instructor.

I've already read a few books on this topic and taken a few classes, but was very happy with the content here. Certainly not just for beginners, this fun book has good illustrations, fun examples, lively writing style and is generally a funky cool book in its own right.

I purchased this book based on the positive reviews on Amazon. After receiving the book, I was disappointed after reviewing the book.

It is interesting but not as detailed as I had hoped. And the hand drawings showing how to stitch was confusing. I wouldn't recommend this to a newbie just learning. Instead I recommend Bookcraft: Techniques for Binding, Folding, and Decorating to Create Books and More. It was much more thorough and complete. I found this book at the library and it was hands down better.

"How to Make Books" is a great book for artists. You'll get a huge inspiration and great book ideas to make and release your own artist book! It's nice, modern and it works! It's a must!

Full disclosure alert: I haven't seen every book-making craft book out there, but I have a few of the big ones, and this is the book I like best. Why? Simple: clarity and ease of instructions. I don't know about you, but a little too often I find myself reading through the instructions in a craft book going, "Okay, but how do I DO that?" Not so with this book. That really set it apart.

Plus, the author is just so charming! She packs plenty of stories from a full life as an artist into these pages; they're a fun read and very inspiring too. I was delighted to discover that she gives classes at Cooper Union in NYC. Her class is now on my to-do list.

With a bulging shelf and a hard drive full of patterns, I'm on a craft book diet right now, but I had to make an exception for this one because it's so good.