Friday 27 April 2012

My first book

So this week I had my first adventure in book making. I drafted up a small leather book to use as a visual aid for a client project, using leather offcuts from Spittalfields market and thick handmade paper I bought from my college shop.



There's an ugly seam on the back because I has to sacrifice leather size for colour. The guy I bought the leather from has a full sized shopping trolley of offcuts to dig through (all just £1 each!) but only boring colours- grey, black, brown- came in larger sizes.


The paper is thick and luxurious, with a lovely raw edge. I had to trim down the pages to fit within the leather so instead of using scissors and ruining the edge, I laid a ruler down one size and tore the pages down to size.


The pages were sewn in down the centre line and the outer pages carefully glued down to cover the edge of the leather. Then, as an afterthought, I made a bookmark out of embroidery floss and had to pry the glued pages back so I could shove it in place.


The final touch was using Letraset rub-on transfers to title the book. Turns out rub-on transfers are hard to rub on leather that's not properly stretched!


I think I'm definitely going to have a crack at making books again in the future, maybe as presents for friends with made up stories or quotes in them. If I make another blank one, I'll document my working process properly and make a tutorial post on it. It would be cool to combine this with other hobbies I want to take up- how about a lino-block printed book with a cover decorated with pyrography?

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