The custom of adorning books with their owner's signatures is perhaps as old as books themselves. The reasons for having a distinctive stamp or a bookplate on every book in your home library are pretty obvious: theft protection (this includes the practice of "borrowing"), owner's pride, artistic value of the designs, the desire to leave some trace in this universe... My personal opinion differs from that of the most book collectors. I simply do not find it appropriate to permanently mark as yours an object that will most likely outlive you perhaps even without loosing any of its value. Of course, if we are talking about a stamp used by a library, that's a whole different story. On the whole, however, I think that bookplates are more appropriate than stamps, because they do not look permanent. Well, enough of the disclaimer! You still want to make your own ex libris or bookplate?In the past pretty much the only way to obtain a personal ex libris was to have it designed by an artist and turned into a personalized rubber stamp. With the advance of computers it became extremely easy to design bookplates on your own PC and print them out. But what if you lack any artistic ability whatsoever? I suggest you use the tools available at www.says-it.com. Put the words Ex Libris at the top your your design and add your name on the next line. If you have a personal motto you can use it with or even instead of you name. It's that easy! Just make sure you use water resistant ink in your printer!
P.S. Do I need to explain that "ex libris" is Latin for "from the books"? :) By the way, some people incorrectly refer to bookplates as labels.
