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Hello, it's Natasa from Treasure Books.Let me tell you how this began.

It started a long way from a YouTube channel — with a child who had no paper, and a mother who made her something from nothing.

Natasa mid-laugh holding a finished treasure book, shelves of journals behind her
The origin story

I learned to make something from nothing long before I knew it had a name.

Thirty years ago, as a refugee child, paper was a luxury. There were days I didn't have a single sheet — let alone pencils, paint, or glue.

Then my mum was given an old calendar, the year already gone. But the back of every page was blank. Glorious, empty, blank paper, full of possibilities. That is where my love of paper began.

I made my own glue from flour and water, and collages from leaves and flowers. I learned to use what I had — to reuse, to recycle, to upcycle — without ever once feeling I was going without. If anything, I felt the opposite: a quiet, absorbing kind of fulfilment in making the most of what was already around me.

I still remember the doll my mum made me — a deflated ball for the head, old stockings for the arms and legs, an old pillow for the body. She drew on the eyes and the lips. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and I was so proud of it, and of her.

Perhaps you can relate. That child grew up, and tried jewellery, knitting, all sorts of things — but always came back to paper. Making something from nothing became the work of my life — and somewhere along the way it became something else, too: a quiet hour that is mine, a place to keep a memory, a way to settle a busy mind. That is the whole secret, and it is yours too: you can begin, right now, with exactly what you have.

♻ trash into treasure
Where it is now

It turned out I wasn't the only one.

What began on the back of an old calendar is something I now get to share every week — and somewhere along the way, it stopped being just mine.

There are people all over the world doing this now. Saving what others throw away. Keeping their memories in books made by hand. Finding that same quiet hour I found. They gather on the channel, in the group, in the comments — tens of thousands of them — swapping ideas, cheering each other on, showing what they've made.

That's the part I never expected. Treasure Books isn't an audience. It's a movement — of people who believe, like I do, that you can make something beautiful from almost nothing. And there is a place in it for you.

How you can help

Every tutorial here is free — and that is a promise.

Hundreds of hours of it, free on the channel, and it stays that way. What makes that possible is the people around Treasure Books — and there are plenty of ways to be one of them, some that cost nothing at all.

The way that costs nothing
Costs nothing · matters most

Subscribe on YouTube

Everyone can contribute to Treasure Books by simply subscribing to the free YouTube channel. It is quite literally how Treasure Books has survived and grown all these years. If you do just one thing, do this.

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Costs nothing

Join the Facebook group

The daily conversation, and where the movement lives between videos. Share what you're making, find your people — and the bigger the group grows, the further every new idea can reach.

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And the way that goes a little further