#crabapplered

Fonts:

Body: Bodoni

Titles: Lydian

Materials:

Bookcloth: recycled from a photo album

Cover: Marbled Lokta, gold and black on blue; eyelets (coptic); Marbled Indian cotton rag, black and gold (stiffened paper)

Title: Cricut Foil Iron-On

Text block: 5x7 in. greeting cards; Londonderry linen thread 30/3, black; DMC Pearl Cotton Size 5, 3844 Dark Bright Turquoise (coptic); Hammermill copy paper 20lbs, Lineco linen binder’s thread (stiffened paper)

Comparison pictures between coptic (left) and stiffened paper binding (right):

For the first book, I followed DAS’ tutorial on German stiffened paper bindings. However, I did end up modifying it so that the bookcloth covers the top of the boards. So, it’s a bit of a mix between the stiffened paper and case bound book.

For the spine, I used black paper and red bookcloth I recycled from the cover of a photo album. I really like how the gold iron-on vinyl looks on the texture of the black paper.

On my second copy, I followed this tutorial on coptic binding. I had never done coptic before, and was finding it extremely difficult; I actually had to take out the sewing from my first attempt and try again. However, the second time I used a curved needle, and I cannot stress enough how much easier it makes things. My first try took me an hour, and my second 15 minutes.

The eyelets were easier to add than I thought they would be. I drilled a hole with a pin vise, then punched them in with eyelet pliers. If you try this, make sure you get the correct length; mine ended up slightly too short for the thickness of the boards and didn’t punch through all the way, so the inside doesn’t look as good in comparison.

I wanted to make the textblock thicker to show the coptic binding technique more, so I cut down some blank 5x7 greeting cards to the correct dimensions and decreased the signature size from 16 to 8 pages. It sort of works. The paper definitely has a nicer texture and color compared to the copy paper, but on some pages the toner didn’t print correctly and came off when touched. Possibly you would get better results on an inkjet.

I’m still not sure what I think about the coptic binding. It does look very elegant, and the way the pages open flat is definitely a benefit. However, I think you have to be much more careful in construction or it ends up looking sloppy. Which as a person who is always getting measurements incorrect, it was kind of annoying.