I love handmade design stuff (and dreadful puns). You may know this from some of my previousposts.

In my pursuit of a balance between computery and non-computery creations, last weekend I booked (ha!) myself onto a 2-day beginner's bookbinding course run by Simon Goode, over at Birmingham Printmakers in Digbeth.

I'm not going to drone on about it in detail but suffice to say it was great fun and means I'm now able to make good use of the various odds and ends of paper I've collected over the years but not known what to do with, yet been loath to throw away.

With my bookbinding tools and newly acquired knowledge of pamphlet stitching, case binding and Japanese stab binding, come Sunday afternoon I left the Printmakers with a huge sense of achievement … and six (six!) handmade books. Not bad.

I recorded the most complex and time-consuming binding technique we learnt, case binding, in a little photostory:

As you can see, case binding's quite a convoluted process but the end result is well worth the toil and vague "Will it work?!" trauma. It's a proper hardback book!

So, I'd heartily recommend a bit of bookbinding – it's definitely good for the soul.

Oh, and for future reference I am now the go-to person if your pub quiz ever has a bookbinding round. (Codex, foredge and bone folder; I'm totally down with all the bookbinding lingo.)

Simon's running another bookbinding workshop – No Glue Needed – in December. There're details on his website, incase you're interested.