My Easter plans of making myself a couple small handmade journals turned into me making myself six new journals. I had every intention of adding a couple of them to the shop, but in the end I couldn't decide which ones to keep.

So, I'm keeping them all! (I've actually got some for you, too, if you read all the way to the end... and I promise I'll make some books using that beautiful shimmery gold linen - seen on two book spines above - really, really soon!)

When binding books for myself I get to use materials that don't pass the quality requirements for the books I'm happy to sell my customers. That translates into endpapers made of fancy metallic paper that sheds shimmery bits everywhere and covers made of unevenly dyed linen or book cloth that ends up looking quite distressed within days of use. I don't mind the imperfections - in fact they can be inspiring - so all kinds of bits and pieces ended up in these books! You wouldn't believe how scrappy they are by looking at these photos...

Since one of my favourite things is picking out the perfect linen / book cloth / paper combinations, and another favourite thing is taking photos like this of the books I make, let's all take a peek what happens between the covers of the six books:

The shimmer-shedding woodland notebook became my first pick for a new journal. By now it's got plenty more pages filled with scribbles.

And, as promised, new notebooks for you, too! These aren't actually new new, since I made them several months ago, but sort of kind of forgot to add them to the shop at the time... Oh well - they're available now! They all have wonderful 90 gsm drawing paper with a slightly rough grain for pages, and the sewn boards binding structure means the covers are nice and flexible without being flimsy at all. Check out the Paperiaarre Etsy shop to see more photos and to pick your favourite!