leslie herger

I'm a bookbinder with a DayJob just trying to find my way to making art.

I’m Leslie Herger and I’ve been making books since 1997. An interest in creating a sketchbook that had different paper for my varying needs drove me towards creating my first book. IN the last 11 years I’ve learned a lot about making books. I’m also something of a notebook addict buying the work of others and testing out various notebooks. I’ve been blogging about my addiction; I mean experiments since 2002, just now moving everything over to my own host. In addition to my bookbinding I’ve been in retail sales, store systems (assorted geekery here) and now am a professional multi-tasker for a large multinational grocery chain.

In 1997 I had no goals for my bookbinding other than to create a few cool books for myself and a few as gifts. I stumbled upon selling them when I was furiously attempting to finish binding some small pocket sized Coptic stitched books for Christmas gifts on my lunch break. A coworker asked me what I was doing, I explained and she asked if she could buy one of my books as a gift. Always willing to make a buck, I said sure. And the bookbinding portion of Comfortable Shoes Studio was born. Around 1999 I started to sell my books on eBay, using an ancient scanner to scan in my spines and covers. Soon my sales allowed me to buy a digital camera. I had started a personal blog around this time period and I posted about my binding experiments and Comfortable Shoes Studio.com was born. After the death of my personal blog I started to keep a blog just for my bookbinding.

Now in 2008 I blog about my books, ebay, etsy, art and I constantly read about other people’s work online. So here as I move my blog from blogger, to typepad and then to my own domain I’ll be writing more about all of that.

Have some hints, tips or ideas? I’d love to hear them? Send them my way here: leslie.herger{@}gmail[dot]com