Three Personalised Gifts Our Customers Keep Coming Back For

There's a version of a gift that gets used and put down. And then there's the kind that gets picked up again a year later, five years later, because it was made for a specific person at a specific moment.

The personalised pieces we make at SB Libris sit firmly in the second category. Not because we've done anything miraculous, but because a name pressed into leather, or a phrase chosen by someone who knows the recipient well, does something that a generic gift simply can't.

Here are three we've made recently.

Our Cook's Journal - Personalised

This family had a problem many families share: the best food they'd ever eaten lived entirely in one person's head.

The recipes most likely existed — scribbled on paper, tucked into a drawer, a few committed to memory — but there was no single place that held them. No book you could hand to the next generation and say: here, this is what we make.

The Cook's Journal we make in the bindery is designed exactly for this. Your choice of lined or unlined pages for recipes, notes, and the kind of annotations that turn a recipe into a story. Lan's version got her name in gold foil at the bottom of the cover: Lan's secret Book of recipes.

Full Leather Signature Book - Personalised

A 21st birthday is one of those occasions where the effort of the gift is part of the message.

Noah's signature book is landscape format (wide rather than tall). Dark aged goatskin leather, a gold foil title, a small decorative rule underneath. The kind of thing that doesn't look like a gift once it's on a shelf. It looks like it belongs there.

Twenty-first birthdays go fast. Books like this one are why the memories don't.

The Refillable Leather Wrap Journal - Personalised

Some gifts are instructions as much as they are objects.

Jessica's leather wrap journal has her name stamped into the cover, and underneath it: Never Stop Exploring. The wrap-style closure means the journal is perfect to wrap up and go, it's refillable so it grows with the trip. The leather softens over time. The more it's used, the better it looks.

We don't know exactly where Jessica took this journal. But we know she took it.

Your Name on Something Worth Keeping

Every one of these started the same way: a customer who knew the person, knew the occasion, and chose something from our standard range to personalise.

No lengthy brief. No large budget. Just a name, a phrase, or a date — and a piece of leather that will still look good in twenty years.

If you've got someone in mind, we'd love to create it for you. You can personalise any of our handcrafted books, right from your laptop or phone and get a preview of how it will look when it's done. Just select the personalise now button in the product description to get started.

Want to try making your own book?

If you're new to bookbinding we have a free Essential Bookbinding Tools guide. You will be surprised at how little you actually need to make your first book  — download it here to get started.