Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a personal project in mind. I’ve always been interested in bookbinding – especially the idea that I could bind loose items into a notebook that wouldn’t usually be pages, e.g. small paper pockets or envelopes, or different types of paper.

I wanted something quite simple to bind that wouldn’t overshadow the focus on binding itself. In the last half of October, I collected most of the receipts I encountered from myself, friends and family to mount and bind into a book.

Below are a few more example pages I feel are interesting.

Overall, there were a lot of decisions to be made in terms of colour scheme, paper size, what to include, etc. I’m really happy with how the experimental book turned out. It feels nice to hold and turn the pages of, and the envelopes full of offcuts make it a little interactive and interesting.

The idea behind collecting receipts from a certain period of time makes this book almost like a diary. I have dated and captioned every receipt in the book. The main events that this covers is visiting my granddad and a week I spent in Reading with Jamie and his housemates.

What would I do differently / what did I learn? I made a few mistakes, considering it was my first bookbind. Some of the stitching was slightly too loose and some slightly too tight, meaning I had to do some serious page wiggling to make certain pages lay flat. I missed one stitch on an envelope by accident (but tied a thread round the hole to make it look like I didn’t!) That and my mistake in the first stitches, but I fixed that with the last stitches.

How will I take this further? I could take the idea of receipts further, in terms of illustration. I could work with coloured paper and illustrate some conceptual receipts – maybe a diary of my day with items on the receipt corresponding with events. I also thought about lino cutting a shop title, like Sainsbury’s, and creating a small series of receipts – or creating a clay tile receipt and stamping it with the lino cut to create an indented title.

Sadly these are all conceptual for now, along with the next bookbinding project; tomorrow I start my three-day projects which will be completely different briefs. I’d like to place my focus in those so I don’t stretch myself too thin, but you may see me coming back to these ideas yet!