KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 3 — Inspired by the colours and textures of different fabrics, Yap Mun Ching started out Bajou Bijou which offers hand-bound journals. She personally crafts the journals one by one, each one a labour of love.
The name for this part-time hobby is a mix of two words: Bajou is a twist on the Malay word meaning ‘baju’ or clothes in English while Bijou is a French word for jewellery, which Yap used to make as another of her hobbies.
The beginnings of Bajou Bijou can be traced to a surprise find in Japan. As Yap’s day job requires a lot of travelling, she had stumbled upon a shop in Tokyo that sells tenugui, a type of Japanese cloth used specifically for yukata or a lightweight kimono, typically used in the summer. She bought them on a whim without having any idea of what to do with them.
One day, she decided to attend a workshop on hand-bound journals where she learned how to sew them using the coptic stitch. Even after her instructor left the country, Yap continued practising.
Her skills evolved as she learned more online. As time passed, she picked up different types of stitches to bind the journals. Eventually, she chose to use the kettle stitch to make her journals.
Using the tenugui cloth she found in Japan, she binds the journals with the fabric that has distinctive geometric patterns. She also started to experiment with different textiles she picked up from abroad such as hand block printed cloth from India to even indigo dyed textiles made by the hill tribes in Thailand and even China.
What’s unique about Bajou Bijou is how Yap pours her love into each journal, right down to the smallest details. She’s incredibly particular that everything must match from the cloth, elastic to even the packaging.
Case in point: The inner stitching must match the colour of the cloth of the cover or the elastic band. Her eye for detail sees her searching high and low for something as simple as the right shade of colour for the elastic bands.
Yap can easily source for the elastic bands locally but she explains that they are usually white, black or occasionally red in colour. Even the elastic bands from China just don’t cut it for Yap, as she tells us that the shades and variety of colours just don’t match her journals.
After much effort, she managed to find an eBay shop in London and another overseas source that sells the elastic bands she wants.
“These are the little touches that I put into each book that you will not see. I can’t explain this on Etsy or if you buy it online. You will only see it if you open it,” explained Yap.
She further elaborated that, “If you are using it, you will notice that there is a little accent. I would like to think that I picked that up from knowing how the Japanese view craft as not something just made by hand but made with a lot of forethought behind each detail and how you pair up each detail to make the experience complete.”
Usually a strip of tenugui cloth can be used to make approximately eight journals, making her production incredibly small batched and exclusive. Yap ensures that every part of the cloth is used and any leftover cloth is recycled into lanyards.
She also upcycles the metal clips she gets from conferences to be used for these lanyards. So far there are no plans to offer these lanyards yet. The ones she has made so far have been given away to her cousins.
Open up Bajou Bijou’s hand-bound journals (priced at RM39) and you will discover a little pocket at the back. You can store any pieces of paper, name cards and whatnots here.
Each journal also has a Bajou Bijou stamp on the inside to show where the textile came from. Yap chose to do this so people will know the origin of their products. As a customer herself, she likes to know where a product is from.
Another thing that Yap retained from the workshop where she learned how to hand-bound these journals is that she uses recycled kraft paper. This type of paper is great for fountain pens as the ink won’t seep through because of the thickness.
All of Bajou Bijou’s notebooks are plain without lines or grids to allow people to freely draw, illustrate, write in English or Chinese or any language whether it’s vertical, horizontal — the options are endless.
A service that Bajou Bijou offers is that you can purchase a Bajou Bijou rubber stamp: either RM125 for the full page ones and RM70 for the small checklist stamp.
These rubber stamps allow you to personalise the journals to make it into a diary or create lines. So far, Bajou Bijou’s journals only come in one size, which is 105 x 108 millimetres as Yap finds this size much easier to use.
As this venture is more of a hobby, Yap doesn’t really focus much on marketing and promotion. Occasionally, she gets inquiries from people to learn hand-bound journals which she appreciates but with her busy schedule, that’s not in the pipeline yet.
For Yap, hand-bound journal making is not as hard as it looks. “It’s not difficult to do because there are a lot of people who teach notebook making and thereafter you just need to have the basic tools which are just needles, a little saw, some glue — very normal things and you can learn online,” she said.
Unlike other hand-bound journals on the market, Bajou Bijou does not have a “handmade feel” as Yap covers the spine of the journal with either cloth, sa paper (a type of material from mulberry bark), linen or some other material.
The entire feel of the journal looks more polished and it is a reflection of what Yap wants the brand to represent.
One thing to look out for is that Yap tends to find cloth that have the design and similar patterns to the Bajou Bijou logo — a homage to the first ever hand-bound journal she made for the brand.
“They come from different places but it’s kind of the general repetitive pattern, the geometric patterns that stay true to what the brand is so if you look actually at the logo you will find this print also in the logo. This is the first one made using Japanese fabric. If you look at the logo, you can see the print. That’s where it all started.”
Check out Bajou Bijou’s hand-bound journals at:
Ilaika Select Store
No. 17, Jalan 20/13
Petaling Jaya
Open daily: 11am to 9pm
Instagram: www.instagram.com/bajoubijou
