Craftsy Stuff

The Latest Gift (I Have Ever Given)

The one problem with handmade gifts for any occasion: when they take longer to make than planned!

In this particular case, the Royal Mail strikes delayed my materials order by a couple of weeks so my two weeks of anticipated crafting time evaporated day by day until my gift was guaranteed to be late.

I whipped up an Interim Gift, of course, a quick little booklet-type notebook with ivory linen style bookcloth softcover and cream lined pages, plus a cover decal.

(no pics because i gave it away so soon after!)

Then I tried to find time to get started on The Actual Gift.

Most of that time fell after Christmas but the early steps I did manage to get done beforehand! Minor victory!

Anyway, (look away giftee, if you're seeing this) the gift is now largely done so here's some work-in-progress snaps:

Folded signatures in sets of 4 for easier counting
Trimming signatures to a uniform width for a neater foreedge
Trimming in progress
The guidesheet and awl for piercing the signatures
A stack of trimmed, pierced signatures ready for sewing!
The signatures on the sewing frame, being sewn onto cotton tapes
The sewn block with the endpapers (green) attached, in the working press as the glue on the spine dries
Mull and headbands being glued onto spine (note that the block has been rounded by now, unlike the pervious image!)
The finished book block, waiting for me to make the cover
Cover boards and card spine lining with leather strips glued on for a raised bands look
The same three pieces but now with the leather spine added in.
And then the leather corners too....
See, raised bands! (A traditional look, that comes from the older sewn-cords style of binding. This just mimics the look of the cords over the spine.)
The finished book, with the cover finished off with black textured bookcloth
And the inside! Lined, cream coloured pages, a total of 128 pages or 256 sides.

 

This was by far and away the most complicated book I've bound (even a full leather binding I'd done previously was easier as I used a simpler spine construction) but it was totally worth the effort.

It's currently in my nipping press to dry out without warping (I hope) for two weeks.

The only thing left after that is for me to try out my heat transfer vinyl on some scraps of that bookcloth, and if that goes well, add an HTV design to the front cover here.

I've got a design ready to go that ties in with the recipients interests, so I'm really hoping that the HTV will work even with the texture of this specific bookcloth. Fingers crossed!

It'll probably get gifted over by the end of January, a full month late!

 

I also did finish the book I mentioned in a previous post (see here) and I even went so far as to try out a budget edge gilding method using metallic acrylic ink to give it a silver edge.

The finished book (well, mostly, I added an HTV design to the cover of this one too)
Plain pages for this one, my SIL wanted to be able to sketch out tarot layouts so no pesky lines getting in the way please!
Hard to see on camera, but a silver fore edge to the book block

 

I also got a few more models to build for Christmas (including a very complicated one that has been put at the back of the pile so I can get a little more experience first!) so look forward ™ to seeing those.

I've also picked up a cross stitch piece again so there might be a post about that at one point...

 

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