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bookbinding: assorted rebindings & more!
Apr. 4th, 2025 02:20 pmFirst and foremost: the bindings!
So, I kinda know someone who runs a small horror-themed bookshop, yeah? She messaged me a while ago asking if I wanted to make some stuff for her to sell, so here's what I've been working on for the last month or so!
The Ars Goetia (1916), edited by L. W. De Laurence
This little guy took the longest because I properly typeset it (and had to fight to the death with Word the whole way to get all the pictures put in how I wanted them!). The text was found on Project Gutenberg and the images are from Le Dictionnaire Infernal (1863).
I kinda based the overall design of the book off a butterfly hand guide I have from the 1920's (here's a scan of it online, if you wanted to check it out). I just thought it has pleasant, pocket-sized dimensions, and I like how the cover is kinda bendy, as well -- I tried to replicate that, but went a bit too thick for it to flex properly. :( Still, I was really pleasantly surprised to see that there was an option on my beloved imposer to make landscape oriented books -- I totally thought at first that I'd have to figure out how to get that arranged properly, but they've got my back like always! <3
Also, the writing on the cover was done with a foil quill. Nice & shiny!
Dracula (1897), by Bram Stoker
Here, I just took a paperback and made it into a hardcover. My first time making an inset (and it definitely shows), but I think the design turned out pretty neat in the end! The illustration on the cover is a woodblock print (c. 1910) by Vladislav Rohling.
finally, In a Glass Darkly (1872), by Sheridan Le Fanu
This was also just a rebinding. I wanted to try and see if it'd be viable to design a cover in Photoshop and print it out, and I think it turned out pretty nicely. Still I put a layer of contact paper over the paper on the cover to protect it, just in case. The cover illustration is by Carlos Schwabe, from a 1900 copy of Baudelaire's Le fleurs de mal.
I also wanted to try painting the edges -- first I put a layer of Payne's Grey watercolor and tried to freehand some flowers to match the endpapers with gold ink... and failed so horribly that I just went over the whole thing with the gold ink to hide it. This makes it so when you open the book, you can see the layer of black under the gold:
Technically, I don't think I did it properly and the pages stuck together pretty badly and took forever to separate, but the end result looks pretty cool, so I guess I'll call it a success, overall!
In the meantime, since the last update...
I've gotten a part time job at a small accounting office! It's mostly just data entry and putting files away, etc, but fine overall. Everyone buys / makes gifts for the boss for Taxmas (aka, the end of Tax Season), apparently, so I was going to make her a sketchbook. [This is a small, family-run office and most of the employees are related: like, it's my boss, her sister, her granddaughter, (and sometimes her daughter comes in to clean, as well), and a few unrelated people. So the gifting isn't, like, that weird.]
also, a backlog of needlefelted projects!
another view:
Thanks for reading and hope you have a nice day! ^^
