BImber Books

I discovered some amazing handmade books over the weekend at an arts and crafts exhibit in Southwestern Virginia. These gorgeous mixed media creations were built by Becca Imbur.

I love the idea of books as art, and I absolutely think any book can count as "art." From a gleaming, gold leafed collector's edition to the most worn, tattered favorite copy with notes scribbled in the margins. Becca Imbur has elevated the idea of books as art to an extremely vibrant, graphic level, and her pieces are visual masterpieces inside and out.

With colorful pages, beautiful textiles, and whimsical details, I don't know how anyone could actually write in them, but if you could make yourself do so, they certainly would be inspirational journals. I have a couple bound journals that have been given to me over the years but which I feel are too pretty to write in (and they're nothing close to these), so I never have; hence depriving the books of their function and rendering them purposeless, which when you think about it that way seems kind of sad for them. What is a book without its contents?

These spectacular pieces would also be great for travel scrapbooks (as long as you have a big budget for your scrapbooking hobby--these journals are expensive), and a lot of the patterns would look very pretty under ink drawings or even watercolors. They were a lot of fun to flip through, I only wish the exhibit had had more of them (there are some beautiful ones on the BImber Books website!) I also think this would make a pretty awesome project for a personalized journal or scrapbook--I'm going to have to look into papermaking and book binding now!