Stylish Books for Stylish Travellers

Planning a fabulous trip?  

Our collection of travel journals, travel albums and, soon to be released, travel document wallets are a must see before you get away.

Travel seems to be on the agenda of a huge number of our customers at the moment.  Over the past couple of weeks, we have had many people visit our store looking for the perfect travel companion for their upcoming trip.  Our leather wrap journals have been a long standing favourite of travellers, but coming in a close second this month have been our very popular hard bound World Maps journal, and our newest arrivals from the Safari collection (pictured below).  

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One BIG request we received throughout 2014 was for a leather travel document wallet.  You asked and we listened....This week we have started working on some stunning soft leather document wallets with space for all your essential travel documents and cards.  They will be hitting the shelves (in-store and online) sometime this month so stay tuned.......  

A sneak peak at our soon to be released Travel Document Wallet.  Handcrafted from soft brown leather with blind stamping to the front.  (Available in-store and online from 24th March)

Want more ideas?  View our Travel Collection here.  Of course these are only a few ideas, you can see more of our journal range on-line - personalise it with stamping to suit your plans.  

Can't find exactly what you are looking for?  We also create custom bindings - so send us an enquiry with the details of what you require.

Want to see how we handcraft our books?  Watch our 3 min video to see our expert bookbinder in action making and personlaising a World Maps Journal.

Beginner's Bookbinding Workshop - New Date Scheduled!

Due to popular demand (all our scheduled workshops being fully booked), we have decided to squeeze in one more Beginner's Bookbinding Workshop for 2014 on Saturday, 29th November.

If you have thought about trying your hand at bookbinding, or just would love to attempt making your own hard covered journal - this full day workshop is for you!  

To find out all the details of what is included and where we are visit the Workshops page on our website.

We're sure you will feel this pleased with yourself too!

INTRODUCING....Automotive Collection

Fine Leather Journals and Albums

It has been a few months since we launched a new collection, but we think this was worth waiting for.

Our new Automotive Collection features stunning Italian vintage printed paper that car enthusiasts everywhere will appreciate.

Leather corners and spine finished with decorative hand tooling

The Italian paper is combined with luxurious chestnut leather and finished with decorative hand tooling.

Choose from blank journals with creamy pages, or photo albums with archival quality dry mount pages. Both available in various sizes and perfect for customising with gold or silver stamping.  

View more of the Automotive Collection or find out about our other collections at our online store.  You can get more information about our personalisation service or view some of our custom binding in our online gallery.

We'd love your feedback so let us know what you think of our new collection.  Post your thoughts in the comments section at the end of this post.

5 Ideas for Personalising your Wedding Guest Book

As your wedding day approaches it can be the little details that make a big difference.  Your wedding guest book is a little detail that can be easily overlooked, but it's not just for collecting names and well wishes from your guests. The guest book is usually one of the few items from your actual wedding day that may be kept and treasured by you and your family beyond.  

Much more than just a place for names.  You can ask your guests to share stories, marriage advice, or even take and attach pictures of the wedding festivities.  

We love making guest books that are perfectly suited to the people who will own them.  So today we have compiled some great ideas for personalising your wedding guest book so it's a perfect reflection of you.

1.  Match Your Wedding Guest Book to your Invitations

This can be as simple as matching the cover to the overall colour scheme of your wedding, or you can have monograms or pictures created to match the invitation like the example shown below.

This wedding guest book was crafted to match the gorgeous image on the letter press invitation.  The guest book featured navy leather spine and corners with a deckled-edged printed paper on the cover.  

2. Pen a Love Letter in Calligraphy

Write a letter, dedication or tribute together or to each other inside the front cover of your guest book.  You could hand write it or print it on the computer, but as it is a truly special day why not go for something really special like the glorious penmanship of calligraphy.  

An example of a calligraphy tribute in the front cover of a custom binding.  This example was actually a tribute written by parents to their son on his 21st birthday.

3. Personalise your Wedding Guest Book with your Names

No one wants their guest book to look 'stock standard'.  Add your name, the wedding date or the year to the cover of your book.  We can emboss on the leather or book cloth parts of your wedding guest book.

Half Leather Signature Book in Provence Red design with gold embossing.

Another popular trend is to include Est. and the year of your wedding, rather than putting the full date.

Wedding guest books in leather wrap style.  

For a more traditional style guest book, include your names and the date on a full leather binding.  More information about our personalisation service can be found here.

Full Leather Wedding Guest Book with Silver Embossing

4.  Add Pictures to your Guest Book

By adding pictures to your wedding guest book, you can make it more of a coffee table book or album. Some people opt to have blank pages for writing alternated with full photo pages of themselves taken throughout their relationship.

With the popularity of photo booths & Polaroid cameras to take snapshots during the wedding reception, another great option for making your guest book really personal is allowing for photos to be added throughout the reception.  A guest book can be created with heavier card stock and guests can add their photos then write their message next to it.

Choose from black or cream card stock to have your guest book custom made such as the large full leather book above.

5.  Choose a Quote or Poem to put on the Front Cover

It could even be a line from a favourite movie or song.  If your guest book is a full leather binding you can literally 'cover' the front cover with words like in the example shown below.  You can select the font and colour of the embossing.  Monograms, family emblems or logos can also be featured on the front cover.  

This custom binding featured a list of descriptive words embossed over the entire front of the full leather binding

You are really only limited by your imagination and we would love to help you with your ideas.  You can get in touch with us or find out more about making a custom wedding guest book by following the link.

If you would like to personalise a wedding signature book from our collection you can shop and personalise one from our online store.

How would you or did you make your wedding guest book personal?  We'd love to hear from you in the comments section.  Any other questions or comments?  We'd love to hear those too!  

Hope this gives you some ideas for making your guest book perfect for your big day,