Back in high school art class (I’m aware that stories should never start with this), I found an old-fashioned book with the most beautiful cover and all I could think was how awesome it would be if I could carve out all the pages and turn it into a box. After many hours of precise exacto-knife cutting, gluing, and glazing, my book-box was finished and I promptly put it on my shelf only to be forgotten and gather dust like so many other teenage projects.

Years – and I mean years - later, Natalie Portman stepped out for the premier of Black Swan holding a green Lolita book clutch and I was immediately brought back to my high school book-box. Within minutes I was on the internet googling away, finding out who was responsible for creating such a keepsake accessory.

Her name is Olympia Le-Tan (apparently I’ve got a thing for Olympia‘s right now), and she launched her “You Can’t Judge a Book By its Cover” collection back in September 2009. How it took me until 2010 to discover her is trivial; her books are so clutch (see what I did there?) I want to collect all of them like a creepy librarian.

See all of her current pieces here. Which would you pick?

//photos via here, here & here