Live & Learn: Real Life Journals: Designing & Using Handmade Books (AARP®) - Hardcover

Diehn, Gwen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1600594921 ISBN 13: 9781600594922

Publisher: Lark Books, 2010

Synopsis

The second in AARP's Live & Learn series celebrates making and keeping journals.
A custom-made journal can enrich a person's life, and this new entry in the Live & Learn series helps readers design journals that enhance the experiences they're chronicling. The unique format features an envelope attached to the inside front cover that contains a small book called Choose Your Own Bookbinding Adventure so readers can select the perfect journal for their purpose. Imagine a reader wants a travel journal that is portable and has both lined pages and blank ones to paint on. The booklet directs him or her to the instructions in the main book that explain how to make that specific design. There are instructions and beautiful illustrations for 16 kinds of books and 10 cover styles. A removable foldout found on the inside back cover explains essential bookmaking basics. People who had personalized journals made for them by the author share their process and their pages, and beautiful photos and profiles of journal keepers inspire readers to make their own and start writing and drawing.

About this title

Reviews

Thick, creamy paper, gorgeous photos, a gallery of pages from beautiful journals, and step-by step sketches draw the readers right in to the mechanics of amateur book construction and open the way toward creative, individualized bookmaking projects. Chapters on tools, covers, paper choices, and bindings are detailed and fully illustrated, but Diehn, a designer as well as an artist, goes well beyond that, making a point to include information on creating a purposeful design, enriching textual content, and binding the words to the visual elements to reflect a bookmaker’s interests and personality. To that end she includes a chapter comprising nine short profiles of individuals whom she helped build journals. The profiles reference a “Choose Your Own Bookbinding Adventure” booklet located in an envelope on the inside front cover. The device is perfect for individual users (as is the tip sheet attached at the back), but librarians will need to secure the booklet to ensure the chapter makes sense. Even with the bit of extra work required, this remains a lovely, helpful volume that will inspire and attract journalers and scrapbookers alike. --Stephanie Zvirin

Edition details

• Publisher: Lark Books
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1600594921
• ISBN 13: 9781600594922
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 180