I was at a market the other day. Business had been slow lately so I thought maybe if I tried hawking my wares at a craft market then MAYBE someone would take notice of my work and give me some much needed muns. I wasn’t really having much success at that moment.

“Excuse me?” a voice came from my storefront as I was organising things below my table. I looked up and needed to do a double take. The person in question was decked out in a glorious array of rainbow colours. “Yes, Hello!” I said, regaining my senses quickly. “What can I help you with?” “I just wanted to say I really like your books. I don’t suppose I could take one of these cards?” they asked, pointing to a stack of business cards next to my books. I said yes and thanked them for their kind words. And that was that. They walked off and I returned to the long hours of waiting for the market to end.

When I got home I had A message waiting for me. --Can you please make me a rainbow book?--

Of course I agreed. Despite my warnings that I might not be able to get a true rainbow coloured leather, they insisted. So I got to work. I set out and gathered my supplies. This was going to be one of the biggest books I’d attempted yet. Naturally I cut and folded twice as much paper as I needed.

It didn’t occur to me exactly how big this book would be until I parked a small car next to it. It was HUGE!

It was required that I give the book plain purple end pages. Kinda amusing since purple isn’t even part of the rainbow.

I gave the spine a slight curve. I was starting to get worried. It was starting to get to the time when I would really need to find that damned Rainbow.

Now I know that the Rainbow was ultimately behind this order. I took a small break from the work and just walked around the block. It’d just stopped raining, the sky still grey with rainclouds. I took my time, just watching the sky as I walked. About halfway through I was walking up a hill. I got to the top and turned around to take in the view. The sun broke through the clouds and warmed my back. A Rainbow sprang into life, seemingly arcing directly onto my house. I felt a chill down my back as I watched it intensify for a split second before the clouds obscured the sun again.  A moment later the rain started again and I ran home, returning absolutely saturated. This was on my work table when I got inside.

I trimmed off an edge and used that to infuse some solutions.

I after a few hours I dabbled some of the solution onto the edges of the book and I felt my spirits lift. This was genuine rainbow leather. You can tell by the way the solution seeps into the book.

It was then time to attach the  covers. I glued some of the offcuts from the end page card to the underside of the mull and then trimmed everything neat.

The problem with having coloured edges is that it makes the centre of the signatures reaaaaaly hard to see. I needed to put in pieces of card in those places before I could begin to do headbands,

Rainbow headbands! 

I needed to pad up the recessed areas of the spine (between the tapes) so I used some thick indian cotton to bring everything up fairly level - I placed the edge of a piece of card along the spine so you can see how much better it is.

A kraft paper hollow went on next, and then another kraft paper guide went over that. The hollow is just a little smaller than the width of the spine, while the guide is the width of the spine + the width of the boards. The guide helps with the next step.

So As you can see if I didn’t have the guide then I would have to guess the width at which to fold the paper.

I finished cutting the leather to size, saving the offcuts to soak in more solution. I like being able to make rainbow edges.

Now it’s time to introduce you to this little jig I made. It’s quite simple. A 45° angle was cut on some 3mm MDF strip. A little block of 12mm MDF was also cut and the pieces glued together like shown. What is it for?

You put it on the corner of your board...

get something the same thickness as your board and place it up against the upright block...

and cut off your corner!

With all the corners cut it is time to do the turn in’s!

And finally the end pages need to be glued to the cover!

And then it was done! I’m so glad the Rainbow let me have the opportunity to do this book. I was starting to miss it.

Okay so while this is mostly a work of fiction, there are a lot of elements of truth in it. I was at a market and the one that commissioned this piece is an amazing creator of wearable art and awesome kids things. You can find their stuff... HERE!! (http://www.twizzlez.com/) I highly recommend checking out their stuff because it is amazing. I’m happy to be able to do Rainbow coloured leather and edges again because I haven’t been able to for a while. If you want to organise to have your very own unique Rainbow book or any other kind of book hit me up on my facebook page or send me a message through tumblr and we can work something out.

Thanks so much for reading I hope you enjoyed it.

For more content and some behind the scenes stuff head here:

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/BuildingBooks/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/buildingbooks/

And for my online shop, head here: