Mindful bookbinding 2024

I am SO excited to bring this offering to Substack, as an extra magical gift to my paid subscribers1. Your paid subscription is an important income stream for the non-profit and supports all of the amazing work we do here and at our community space, The Women’s Health Hub and I am so grateful. This year-long experience of Mindful Bookbinding is my way of saying a huge thank you (whilst hopefully encouraging more of you to join us over the pay wall?).

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I firstly want to stress that this is not a professional bookbinding course and I am not a professional bookbinder. I have learnt most of what I know from the wonderful who teaches bookbinding through her amazing online courses & membership which you can find here. No, I am not coming at this to specifically teach you how to make the perfect book, rather I am using the bookbinding process as an invitation to slow down, to take stock of the day to day, to ground ourselves in gratitude and to connect to one another in the process.

The feedback from current students has been so lovely -

So how does it all work then?

I have ran this course both online and in person since June 2023 and my these groups are still yet to finish their books. What they have, currently, is a folder filled with thoughts, memories, mementos, magical moments of creative play across pages. They have also been guided to make their own hand embroidered book cloth that they have then turned into book covers. We have a few months left of their course and they will finish with a beautiful journal, filled with magic, that they have collected and gathered and then hand-sewn themselves.

That is what I wish to offer to you, here.

In practice, this will look like eight seasonal workbooks, released across the year, each with a video tutorial to guide you through a specific technique. There will be seasonal journal prompts and an invitation to connect to and learn more about the Celtic wheel of the year. Each season will have a private thread here on Substack for us to share our work, ask for support or accountability and to witness each others book slowly grow - from a few blank, folded pages to a perfectly imperfect, totally unique gift. And we will end the year, and the course, with a lovely celebration circle where we each honour our work and our experiences of 2024.

My wish for you here is a regular invitation to slow down, to be purposeful, to connect with the seasons and the changing world outside of your front door. To practice imperfection and inviting play into your creative practice - or maybe even to start a creative practice, letting go of the belief that you are ‘bad at art’. To face the fear of getting things wrong. We will try different creative practices, we will go deep in our journal prompts and some things will be beautiful and others won’t work out or look the way we dreamt. We’ll learn to sit with and appreciate all of it, together.

If you are still on the fence, you are so welcome to a free, 30 day subscription, to access the first workbook and tutorial, to dip your toe in and spend some time with us as a community before deciding if you’d like to join us for the year.

30 days free

Workbook outline & dates:

For those of you who’d enjoy seeing it all mapped out, here is our plan for the next 12 months together…

1. Imbolc ~ February 1st

   Here we will begin our journey, with prompts and activities designed to celebrate the slow return of spring and a video tutorial showing you how to make your own signatures to begin building the pages that will eventually grow into a book.

2. Ostara ~ March 20th

   This workbook will celebrate the spring equinox, with journal prompts and exercises to match the season. You will journal into the signatures made last season, or make more if needed, slowly building up pages. You will also receive a video tutorial to guide you through how I build up my journal pages to allow you to grow your own creative journaling practice.

3. Beltane ~ May 1st

   We will celebrate the second Celtic fire festival of the year and you’ll need to get your power tools out as I take you through how to make your own DIY book press (it also works great as a flower press too!) in my third video tutorial. You will also be invited to continue to journal and gather and create the pages of your book.

4. Litha ~ June 20th

   Here we will lean into the summer solstice energy, take stock at the halfway point of the year and I will guide you through a few basic hand embroidery techniques before showing you how to turn your scrap fabric bag into beautiful book cloth.

5. Lughnasadh ~ August 1st

   For the third fire festival of the year we will celebrate the start of harvest, with journal prompts and activities set to make the most of summers final abundance, as your pile of pages and signatures continue to grow. In this seasons video tutorial you will be shown how to create the covers of your book, using the cloth you made previously.

6. Mabon ~ September 22nd

   As we begin to slow down for the end of the year, we will celebrate the autumn equinox and I will show you how to begin hand sewing all of your journal pages together into a beautiful book.

7. Samhain ~ October 31st

   Here we will honour our ancestors, journal on love and loss and our past selves for the fourth and final (and my very favourite) Celtic fire festival. The video tutorial will also show you how to finish sewing your book and bringing everything together as one, all ready for the end of the year and the end of the project.

8. Yule ~ December 21st

   In our final connect of the year we will gather for a beautiful closing the year ceremony to celebrate each of us, to share our books, our work, our journey over the last 12 months together and to look forward to the lengthening of the days. Wrapping 2024 up in a beautiful, keepsake journal.

   

Perhaps you know someone who would love to join us on this journey too, maybe as a birthday or thank you gift or just because?

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I have poured my heart and soul into these workshops, and even braved speaking in front of the camera (!) and I am so excited to share them with you. If you have any questions at all, perhaps pop them in the comments below? Someone else might be wondering the same thing. Or please always feel free to email me at zoe@postpartummatters.co.uk.

For now though, I’m sending you so much love and well wishes and I’ll be back in your inbox next week,