#book rebinding

I leaned into subtle for the design with gold/blue Japanese bookcloth and a red on red ivy endpaper. The custom endbands are matching gold/blue Japanese bookcloth to blend in with the cover, and the back is paraphrased from a conversation our main character has around the cost, specifically to the arts, of progress. So much of this story is around hiding in plain sight, aesthetic, what’s real and what’s for show, what’s intended and what the impact becomes, and that was fun to try and weave into understated but beautiful materials.

On a whim I attended a 3 day course on bookbinding in early 2025 and am still having so much fun with it. Since I just finished my first 1 kg pot of glue (well... kind of "finished it"... a 3-week heatwave turned the remaining 10% into an near immovable goo thus finishing it for me) I thought it would be nice to do a little round up of the story so far.

I didn't snatch photos of all notebooks before giving them away but I still like the look of the overall collection ^_^

I re-bound another book. This time, Project Hail Mary as a birthday gift for my boyfriend. The image in the window is a photo of the surface of the sun courtesy of NASA.

PSA this was my first go at adding a hardcover to an old paperback book, so I picked something simple to try and test my materials on.

It's extremely badly done lmao and I need better calibration on my printer BUT I now know what types of paper work and how to improve next time.

Working on a way to create shiny covers. Considering lamination and varnishes.

Designed the cover myself etc.

The original paperback cover -> my hardback rebind.

This rebinding/restoration project took me several months but was so so worth it.

This is a 1994 Russian edition compiling four Moomin stories, one of my childhood favorites (from when I was so sure that Tove Jansson used black and white illustrations solely so that I could have lots of fun coloring them).