#peller boxes

Guess what! I finally gathered my pages of scribbled notes, my camera of haphazard in-progress pictures, and finally compiled a set of instructions for making one of these bad boys!

And not only that, but I've got two versions of this baby. I like mixing and matching my unit families because sometimes 1/32 inch sparks joy and sometimes 14 mm is just so convenient, but especially since all of my chipboard comes in english thicknesses, here's a version of the process for my fellow imperial units weirdos:

And here's one for the sensible folks of the world, raised on a base-ten system rather than dividing everything in half and then in half and then in half-- I won't subject you to inches, when there's a workaround, but I was tempted! Have your localized version of the story and have fun with it:

Mad credit of course goes to Hugo Peller, who developed these things in the first place, but also to Jack Fetterer, who preserved a set of notes from a 1990 class, which, as far as I can tell, are the most complete set of instructions available online. But I'm an engineer, I couldn't be satisfied there, I had bludgeon it into a system of equations, sorted by usage and material. And I also go into some of the hiccups I ran into trying to follow those class instructions, like being a green amateur at leatherwork, or not having the equipment to saw plywood boards in my apartment. These instructions still do make some unfair assumptions about the base knowledge level of anyone who wants to give this a try, like using bookcloth rather than plain cloth, but I may try to loop back and adjust that soon.

This was a learning process and a half! The only instructions I can find for this are some handwritten notes from a class in 1990, and the person who posted those notes also posted a number of critiques of the technique as described in the class. Also, the class notes (and addendums) come from an expert perspective, catering to experts. I'm an enthusiastic amateur who's still learning basic competence with leather. I was smart enough not to do a leather slipcase, but overconfident enough to cover my spine and edges in leather, haha. But even though I have a LOT of notes for what to tweak next time, I love it SO MUCH

I arbitrarily decided to work with my millimeter binding of 'and love unbolts the dark' by blackkat for this experiment, because it's small, it's one of my favorites, I had more of the leather I used for its edges, and I thought I had more of the cover fabric and it would be a good match to one of my yellow marbled papers. As you can probably tell from those photos, things didn't quite go that route!

First, I couldn't find the fabric. It might be in here somewhere, but I have FAR too much fabric, lmao. But I did find a lot of this dark green one, in the same line, and with some lovely color overlap, and a nice aesthetic match for the leather. And then I also realized that the marbled paper was a Lot in comparison to the rest of what I was pulling together. So I left it as a liner for the inner slipcase, to tie into the yellows of the original fabric. Then I dug up an embossed teal paper that matched the dominant palette of the new fabric, and went for broke. And I love this so much, truly, it was a headache trying to wrap my head around the instructions and I still have some minor complaints about the process, but I am so, so pleased right now. I would joke about how little time it will be before I do this again, but... I've already started

I wanted to switch up a number of variables and try another peller box. So this time I gave a home to my copy of 'the amorous intrigues and adventures of aaron burr,' which is authentic 1800s sexy rpf that I bound earlier this year. Is it good? Does it deserve a physical form? Does its physical form deserve to live in a fancy box? Shhh shh shh, that's not important

What's important is that giving a hilariously bad book the luxury treatment makes me laugh. And, even better, it makes for a great test dummy for these boxes without risking major heartbreak on my part. I tried boards half the thickness of the last box (much easier to cut, still structurally sound, but even with lots of pressing, WOW, they want to warp), I experimented more with the faux rounded spine, this box has paper covered edges instead of leather (again, easier, but the leather really does help smooth that closure), and so on.

This box isn't perfect, but neither was my last one. And really, I think my favorite measure of quality isn't whether something is GOOD, but whether it's RAD AS HELL. I'm going to forcibly drag myself away from the chipboard to accomplish something else for a little while, but seriously, this is so much fun. I love watching these gifs loop, but it's ten times more cool to hold it in your hands and open and close it

YEAH, BABY! Those are strip magnets lining the tip of the fore edge boards in the way described in the original class notes from hugo peller. I'm not completely in love with the technique, it's really hard to accurately cut long 2mm strips of magnet, but the effect is CHOICE. And I've still got like fourteen feet of magnet to work with, so!

Also.... my own empurata megatron fic has a new empurata themed home. Making me laugh is my highest priority! I was leafing my stash of books I haven't given away, seeking inspiration for how (besides magnets and testing metric measurements) I could add spice to this project, and the answer was cutouts! Cutouts shaped like a robot had his face amputated and swapped for a single eye. And, I won't lie, I don't do much precision cutting, but I'm pretty proud of how many quality circles I was able to cut out of board and paper to make this happen! I really need to see if I can find some other craft to catch my wandering eye soon, but boxes are truly just so satisfying

Credit of course to the vendor who sold the journal printables, which were fantastic to work with, the A5 sizing is almost identical to half-letter, and the white finish was perfect. My first attempt was sized for full-page printing and the fine pale decorative lines were invisible at half-letter. If I were to do this again, I would recommend not doing ribbon loops to hold coptic notebooks like I did, but something closer to zhalfirin's approach (I naturally forgot I'd ever seen this post until after I was fully committed to this one, lmao). This was an interesting challenge, even if the project isn't my hole that is made for me, and I'm excited to hand these off to their recipients

'Out of Africa,' by Karen Blixen! I've never read it, and I'll be real, by the time I did this in binderary, I was barely capable of processing words anymore. I still have no idea what's in here, I'm just lucky the formatting was cooperative and consistent. But I did want to give it a very colorful, vibrant treatment. I was out of time to shop, be ut fortunately, I found (double-sided) endpapers I loved, then a fabric to match, and everything shook out from there.

And then.... as you can probably guess from the backgrounds up above, there's also a peller(ish) box. Last time I visited my grandma, I brought some books and boxes to show her what I'm doing with my life instead of producing great-grandchildren. She asked that I leave them behind to show off to visitors, and we compromised and I left some behind, which just so happened to include none of the sexy fanfic that I or my friends have written, lmao

When my aunt showed up to tap in on the elder care rotation, grandma showed her, and she reached out to me to ask if I take commissions. I don't, I give gifts, and I am very bad at planning ahead and didn't realize how bad I was about to burn myself out for no good reason at all, so I said sure. And she wanted an enclosure and most of what I left there was peller boxes, and I was too anxious to ask if she wanted an EASY box or a FANCY box. And then I was blindsided by my mom mentioning she was about to head north!

So I have to drop this off tomorrow, which meant I had to finish it IMMEDIATELY, which meant one non-book binderary project slipped in under the radar XD In a day, I will only have 59 binderary books in custody, which is sad, but it was good incentive to stage photos, and it means I'll have space back soon. We'll see how I space the other photos out, I probably don't want to spoil all the presents for the people I know online, but that means making decisions and I am very tired. But this is an easy one! Huzzah, etc., I should be posting more books soon!

I do not deserve a box I feel this affectionate for, but I will 100% take it. This was a lot of fun even with my brain trying to go into sleep mode on me, and it'll forever be mentally associated with background music of jenny nicholson telling me all about theme park history. No video for this one, but I've used strip magnet slices again in the fore edge, the slipcase is adhered to one cover like it was a normal clamshell box, and I've got an extra stacked layer under the slipcase that is aligned with the top edge of the shell (and holds the magnet)