I’ve finally finished my extended project, a “Look Book” as it’s called. It’s a book filled with inspirational photos that can be used when looking for a cut or a color example. Most students bought scrapbooking material and clipped everything out of magazines, however, that’s not the route I selected. Why? Well for one because the scrapbooking route tends to cost a bit of money. Between the books and the decorative paper and all the other little bells and whistles added, I’ve seen a few that have cost the student in question over a hundred bucks to put together. Second, I wanted to put something together that was different, and more “me.” So I utilized my years of publishing experience as well as some hobby bookbinding experience to put together my own book, from the ground up…

…it had been years since I’ve put something like this together, and it showed – considering all the steps I’ve forgotten about. Either way, it’s not perfect but it’s perfectly good. More pics follow…

1) I started with a series of 8-page signatures, arranged ‘em, creased ‘em, and punched the stitching holes in the spines.

2) Gathered up some materials for the bookbinding portion, including some metal flake patterned red vinyl for the cover, and carving a little seal for the lower corner.

3) I stitched the signatures onto cloth tapes…

4) …and glued a cloth mull onto the tapes and across the spine.

5) Finished the tooling of the leather “seal” that will adorn the cover.

6) Attached the coverboards to the mulls and clamped it all together. I then cut the vinyl, and glued the spine into the vinyl.

7) Once the coverboards were bonded, I glued the cover vinyl onto the whole sh’bang…

Presto! The finished product. Here are some pics of various pages in the book, to give you an idea of what it all looks like inside:

…fun project, but it took a good deal more work and time than I thought it would. Still, the end product more than justifies the added time and effort spent on completing a book that will stand out and that I might not want to just throw away at the end of my education..