This year I want to work more on bookbinding, so I started off the year (and the end of last year) with finishing up my Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass book!
I started this book at least two years ago now and I have made the entire book, even to editing and printing the text. I started using a word processing program in the beginning, but I switched over to Affinity Publisher and I’m so glad I did. It made putting the illustrations in and creating a table of contents very easy.
One of the main reasons that I wanted to have so much control (other that wanting things to look just so) was I wanted to flip the Through the Looking Glass book. You open the book from the front, the red side, and you read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; then you flip the book over and starting from the back, the blue starry side, and you can read Through the Looking Glass!
I printed it all out, and then I stalled out on the project. I didn’t feel that my bookbinding skills were up to it and it became part of the motivation to learn some more and why I took the introductory class at the American Academy of Bookbinding!
This winter I was ready to tackle this project and get it done. I did a basic sewn book block with tapes, and cased-in cover.
For the cover I used imitation leather on the spine and I used my Silhouette Portrait and Foil Quill tool to add the title and author. I’m still working on how to make that look better, it just really isn’t the right tool for the job, but it’ll do for now. The decorative papers are ones that I wanted to use from the beginning. Red paper and hearts for Alice in Wonderland, and dreamy stars (and one of my favorite papers) for Through the Looking Glass.
I got to use my red and white endbands and I always like a ribbon bookmark so I added that too. I also wanted to emphasize that when you are reading Through the Looking Glass, the book is upside down.
It is hard to express in pictures how the flipping of the book works but it is pretty cool and it was fun to design and figure out!
As satisfied as I am with this project, I already have plans to make another one of these using a different binding style and design!
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