Her book is a lighthearted and whimsical recollection of high school experiences wherein Nelson regrets being so straight-laced and missing all the fun that other — more hip — girls had. Designed as a purse, Nelson's work and its wrapper were made using shocking pink, prom dress sateen.

"Everything inside and outside is all me," Nelson said. "I wrote it, I designed it, I printed it and included some photographs that were meant to look like old Polaroids."

The photographs are of little dolls "pretending to be slutty, but not like Barbie Doll slutty, they're really very innocent looking." In the end, the book is a playful homage to the "girls who really knew what it was all about."

Garrett created a design binding for a book printed and published in London in 1914: "The Art of the Book: A Review of Some Recent European and American Work in Typography, Page Decoration and Binding."

"I only found the book," Garrett said. "I didn't do anything with the insides. That is what design binding really is. You have to work with the text in order to get something that is appropriate for the cover."

The resulting beaded and embroidered binding is patterned after historical panel bindings from the 16th and 17th centuries. Produced over a six-month period that averaged two hours per square inch, Garrett's binding consists of miniature Japanese and Czech beads sewn into a pattern of floss-embroidered velveteen.

Because artist books are so unique, they can be produced only in small numbers, usually in an edition of five to 10.

For example, Richard Minsky's design binding for the well-known novel, "1984," by George Orwell, brings together lizard-grained cowhide, white hologram foil stamping, an LCD monitor embedded in the cover and a miniature video camera hidden behind the leather with a one-eighth-inch hole for the lens. When you hold the book up to your face, you see yourself on the screen.

"One of the most beautiful books in the exhibit is "Reliqui?" by Karen Jutzi, Powers-Torrey said. "It's a small book, an abecedarium (a book employing the rudiments of the alphabet)."

For every letter of the alphabet, a female saint who was martyred is listed and illustrated by a Van Dyke printed photograph of a tortured bird. (The images were taken from the collections of the Field Museum in Chicago.)

"It's an interesting choice, but it's just absolutely gorgeous, it really is."

Other books that will intrigue and inspire are Timothy Ely's "Clockwerk Men Before Enlightenment," Adam Watson's "Dancing Dodecapod," Peggy Johnston's "Starship Log and Pod," Barbara Lazarus Metz's "Birds of North America" and "Know Your Wild Birds" and Melinda Padgett's new binding for Willa Cather's "Death Comes for the Archbishop."