Discover the ABC Market, a curated collection of high quality and handmade literary gifts and home goods.

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend an awesome local event: the Girl Boss Holiday Pop-Up market, featuring women-owned small businesses and handmade goods. It was such a fun and inspiring event (a full recap is coming soon!), and today I want to introduce you to one of the amazing Girl Boss makers I met that day!

Allison Murphy is the creative force behind The ABC Market. From the minute I glanced her shop’s profile on Instagram, I knew we’d hit it off! The ABC Market is a literary gifts and home goods store featuring Allison’s beautiful hand-folded books. Have you seen these before? I’ve been obsessed since the first time I saw one!

Allison first discovered folded books while she was planning decorations for her “Secret Garden” themed wedding (doesn’t that sound like the most beautiful wedding theme!?). After coming across the idea online, she bought a folded book and deconstructed it to figure out how to make her own. She created her own hand-folded book—her wedding date—and it was so popular with her guests that they started requesting their own! The ABC Market was born shortly after.

To create her folded book art, Allison measures, marks and folds each individual book page to create a pattern. Each pattern requires a certain number of pages to create a letter, number, or symbol. Typically, it takes about 100 pages to create one letter. She never cuts or damages the pages, covers or spines.

Most of the books Allison uses in her creations are reclaimed, vintage, or donated. She told me she recently had the opportunity to collect books from a business that was moving to a new location and needed to reduce their library inventory. She left with hundreds of books! Customers can also provide their own book for their orders, especially if it holds a special meaning. Her folded books have even been used as part of marriage proposals! And her Harry Potter-themed books are among her most popular designs.

As a coffee-aholic, this one obviously beckoned to me:

Along with folded books, ABC Market includes other bookish gifts and goods, from these beautiful wooden bookmarks to coffee mugs, hand-crafted soy candles and literary-themed apparel.

The ABC Market also carries Haitian-made makeup bags, leather pouches, and keychains. After participating in several missions to Haiti, Allison put a priority on carrying products made in Haiti, with proceeds of the sales of these items going back to the Lifeline Christian Mission.

As a lover of all things handmade and book-related, I am completely in awe of Allison’s folded books. This is something I would love to learn to do, and I was thrilled when Allison told me she’s beginning to offer book-folding workshops! While I believe the required math (and patience!) would get the better of me, I’d still love to join a workshop and try it for myself!

As we head into the holiday season, I encourage you to consider shopping “small” and supporting handmade businesses like Allison’s. And if you’ve got a bookworm on your list, I can guarantee he or she would be thrilled by one of Allison’s handcrafted books, mugs or wooden bookmarks. You can shop her collection here, or contact her here to chat about a custom folded book.

In case you’ve missed it, all November long on my Instagram Stories, I’m highlighting one of my favorite small shops every day of the month in what I’ve dubbed my #ShopSmallSpotlight feature. You can see all of the shops and makers I’ve featured so far in my Highlights.