There’s nothing like walking into a used bookstore or your local library and perusing all those old cloth-bound books. (Or maybe you’re lucky enough to have a bunch lying around the house). They just don’t make hardbound the same way anymore. Old cloth-bound books rock! Sometimes they’d have weird stains on the covers, but that just added to the charm.

Now, you can get some kickass journals made out of said old books. Something like this:

(The man kind of reminds me of the Monopoly guy. What a cool cover this must have been. I wonder what kind of book it was. But I digress.)

This journal comes from Los Angeles-based Tyler Bender Book Company. Tyler takes old books, painstakingly resizes some of their covers — this particular blue journal happens to be 4 x 6 inches. But there are some full-sized books; there’s a recycled Bible cover adorning one of the journals.

A variety of papers fill the books. Those papers range from the plain lined paper from your school days (college-rule? wide-rule? aaaaaah!) to colored paper to old accounting ledgers (aaaaaaah again!). And each sheet of paper is hand-cut. (Considering most of these journals have 200 pages or so, that’s a heck of a lot of cutting.)

Each book is a surprise, and they’re almost too pretty to write or draw in!

Tags: altered books, books, journals, paper, tyler bender book company, vintage