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).

Hardcover rebind of the first volume of How to Survive as a Villain.

A little rebind I made of The Last Unicorn by Peter S Beagle!

This was one of my favourite movies growing up! I loved the animation style and its story was so cozy and beautiful! I recently rewatched it as an adult and enjoyed it much more than I thought I would!

So this rebind was also an opportunity to continue playing with leather. I was lucky enough to find a few leather scraps at a local bookbinder studio. This one was so thin it gave me a lot of trouble. I had to start over the whole spine because the first piece kept ripping apart!

The stain-glass design is drawn by me, and the frame at the back of the dust jacket is partially from the mirror scene in the movie!

My Heated Rivarly and The Long Game rebinds!

A near perfect version of my Project Hail Mary rebind with painted edges! This won’t be listed in my Etsy shop for a while. I am prepping for an in-person event at the end of the month, and I have to make sure I have stock to sell there! A few listings I am letting sell out, or I am making inactive for now while I prep for the Makers Festival on May 30th in Massachusetts. I plan to have a few copies of some of my most popular listings - like Dune, PHM, Jurassic Park, and more ready to be sold then. This is one reason why rebinds are so expensive! They take so long to make, you can only make so many at any given time. I am excited for the festival - I am just not sure how popular rebinds will be, so I may be overly prepping, but better safe than sorry.