May 2015 Week 8ish - Cover and Assemble

Hello Everyone,

It has been a long week with a touch of sadness for me and my family, as our dog passed away from cancer.

But I was able to finally finish the Layered Cut Paper book and so below is how I made the cover and assembled the book.

For the cover,  I used black book cloth, PVA glue, pieces of mat board (general everyone says to use gray or Davy board, but I have a lot of smaller scrap mat board pieces that have been sitting around), a couple of very heavy books that will be used as weights.

First, I cut the book cloth to the appropriate size.  In this case, it was  12" x 18".  For the corners, you need to lay the boards out and cut at a diagonal about 3/16ths of an inch from each corner.

Once you add the glue to the book cloth it is very hard to make changes.  So, after the book cloth is cut and before you start gluing, you will want to check to make sure you measured correctly.  If you fold over the cloth and it seems short, it is easier to start over and re-cut a new piece of book cloth.  You can save the short piece to use on another project.  If you fold over the cloth and it seems too long you can easily trim what isn't needed.

When you start gluing, you will want to always work from the middle out.  And you need to work carefully, cleanly and quickly.

For the Corners, you will want to glue one side down and then run a bone folder over the edge, as follows:

It creates a flattened tuck.  When you fold the other side up it will be a neat corner.

After the cover was glued, I put it under the heavy books for a day or two to dry and flatten.


After it was dry, I added the lettering to the front of the cover.  Using a print out of the type from my computer.  I transferred it on to the book cloth by taking a light colored pencil and coloring the back of the paper.  Then I carefully used a stylus to go over the lettering.

after transfer before adding the gold

Using a gold pen, I carefully painted each letter.  And added a gold stripe.

Next I added the end papers to the inside of the cover.

I did take the tag off the paper before I glued it. :)

Finally, I glued in my pages.  Making sure I aligned the pages, so that the spine is open and the pages will sit on the table without having to be suspended.

And here is the completed book!

Just as a note, I was planning on adding some sewing on the pages.  I decided not to.  I think it would have looked too busy.  Adding the color was enough.

Also, it will need to be put under weights for a few days, to help the pages flatten out.


For next month, I have already decided to do a much simpler book.  It will be a folded 16 page, single sheet book.  I will give more information about it in the next post.

Until then,

Happy Book Binding!

Sheila

This post is dedicated to my beloved, Arthur.  He will truly be missed!