This is my first book commission! My Dad wanted a book made of “An Historical Account of the Expedition Against Sandusky under Col. William Crawford in 1782” (and yes, that is a very long title!) so I gladly made it for him.
This is one of the biggest books I’ve bound and it was a bit of a challenge. I wanted to work on the technique of rounding and backing the book. Rounding is just what it sounds like, adding the curve to the spine of the book, and backing is adding a sharper “shoulder” on the front and back to accommodate the cover. It turned out really nice and I learned a lot!
Overall I wanted do a more classic style of binding, with a full cloth cover and marbled endpapers. The best paper that I could get locally was a print of marbled paper, but at least the gold was foiled, so it still looked really nice.
Along with making a more classically designed book I wanted to improve on how I titled the book. This did involve buying some new stuff!
What I ended up getting was this cute little hot foil stamping machine. I also got a set of letters and a couple of holders to make my own titles. It took a bit of a learning curve, but I managed to get it down. I bought some foil that was better and that also helped. It was a bit expensive, but I hope to get a lot of use out of this machine. I did get a custom stamp with my logo on it that I’m super excited about!
I couldn’t really get the whole title on the spine, so I did an abbreviated version. The lines and the “M” at the bottom were added with a stencil and my Creative Versa-Tool. On the front of the book however, I did put the complete title. I used my Foil Quill tool with my Silhouette Portrait and tooled the gold on a piece of imitation leather. I was very glad that I have a lot of different ways to apply foil!
It turned out great and my Dad loved it! I still have a lot of learning to do, which just means every book gets even better!
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