Books were a big part of Amy’s childhood. Reading, but she also comes from a family of artists where making scrapbooks was the norm. “My dad and my grandad would make scrapbooks of paintings, of photographs, and I still have some of these. I remember being little, going into my dad’s studio and being obsessed with the paper and the pens”, she says. “I still use them today.” After going to art school Amy thought she’d like to make books, but it never happened. When she eventually got round to teaching herself online a few years later, it didn’t really click so she put it to one side. It wasn’t until she was doing some film photography that she thought she’d like to make her own album. She still had the materials and tools, so she got stuck in and… eureka! She was obsessed, it completely took her over.
Once she’d started making, she couldn’t stop. It reached the stage where she’d made so many books she had to find something to do with them. So, after kitting-out friends and family, she started taking them to sell at fairs and markets. They are lovely things. She has an eye for beautiful fabrics and colour combinations, for what proportion makes the perfect notebook and there’s the touch of craftsmanship in each notebook that you simply don’t get with a notebook you pluck off the shelves of a big stationery store. Amazingly, Amy is completely self- taught. “I’ve only ever been on one course and that was for box making”, she says. “I’m still experimenting and trying to find my own style, I’ve only scratched the surface of what I can learn.”
