#bookblock

[magnoliazul]

A couple more books I’ve made over the last few weeks.

I love how simple it looks - somehow it feels very classic.

Please consider giving me a follow for support 🙆🏻‍♀️ - @magnoliazul.folio

[gabrielleguy]

Signing off the proof! This should be on press soon.

[queerographies]

[Sierocoinvoltə][Conigli Bianchi][PrEP in Italia]

Questo è un lavoro di scrittura collettiva, una polifonia di voci sierocoinvolte che racconta un viaggio lungo 40 anni di HIV. Tanti punti di vista diversi per ripercorrere il passato, fotografare il presente e pensare il futuro delle persone sierocoinvolte. Una narrazione dal basso di singoli individui, soggettività e associazioni, per cambiare e decostruire la rappresentazione che ancora oggi…

[camilegrant513]

Readers Block Broken!

Hey all Happy Hump Day! So exciting news this week. This last weekend I broke the readers block I’d been having for a while. Much like writers block my readers block prevented me from moving more than a few pages in some books I’ve been really excited about reading. I even sat down with a few books I know I get wrapped up in and couldn’t make it more than a few pages before anything else became…

[zhalfirin]

A princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs

Full cloth binding, backed with french groove and paper onlays, coloured edge and french double core endands.

The typeset was part of Renegade's Tiny Books Bang event last year, but it took me forever to get enough distance to come up with my own cover instead of copying the wonderful bind that was exchanged in the event.

This wonderful typeset was provided by @tinwhiskerpress

Materials used:

case covers - grey board 2,4 spine stiffener - cardboard covering materials - commercial bookcloth (Duo brick, brown) paper onlays: bugra bütten (yellow, green), marbled paper (by Renato Crepaldi)

inner book bookblock paper - Schleipen fly 05 (115gsm) endpapers - marbled paper by @renato-crepaldi endbands - buttonhole silk (Gütermann), leather core (1 and 2mm) edge colouring - oak gall ink and interference chameleon acrylic ink (Nebula copper)

Size: ~A6

See WIP pictures here and some detail pictures here

[aley-nag]

Making my own bookcloth

Back in february I went to a convention for all kinds of crafts and found a lot of cool materials I wanted to try in lieu of bookcloth. This was my first foray:

Finished book!

In a workshop back in 2023 I learned how to back normal cloth with silk paper so that it can function as bookcloth. I was taught, that this is necessary because otherwise the glue would press through the cloth and be visible on the front. With this dragon scale styled cloth I wasn't afraid that would happen. It is very thick and has kind of a plasticky coat. So I disregarded all of that advise and just tried to do it like I would with regular bookcloth:

I noticed very quickly that the cloth kinda soaked up the glue and I needed a lot to get it wet and sticky enough. Than I ran into the problem, that my newly fashioned edge cutter was a little to narrow for such thick material. I had little holes at the corner where the cloth didn't quite overlap. It also would not really stick to the carton. First I tried pressing it down with my fingers, than with a vise. Nothing worked, it just wouldn't stick. That's how I learned there's a second reason for backing the cloth: So that it will fucking stick. The glue is not suitable for things that are not paper. So you have to adhere paper first to the cloth and then you can connect that paper to the carton.

This is how I learned to do it:

Iron the cloth until all the creases are gone. Otherwise they will stay permanently. Leave the iron on. Dilute your glue with wallpaper paste (I used the regular one for paper from a hardware store and used the strongest water/paste ratio; the paste/glue ratio I kinda eyeballed approx. 1:3). Then put it in a laquer dish like in the picture and use a roller without this really fuzzy stuff (this one is more like foam). This will help you put the glue on very quickly and evenly. Lay out the silk paper (normally you should measure the cloth larger than you need it and the silk paper a little smaller than the cloth so that you don't have glue remnants everywhere. I already cut mine so the silk paper is larger here). Roll on your glue (very quickly but make it thin and even). Then wait. Test it with your fingertips. It should still stick but not be really wet anymore. Otherwise it will press through your cloth and you will have stains. If it gets to dry it will not stick. Then carefully stretch out all the creases. If you think it is right, put on the cloth, flip it and go over the silk paper with an iron. Be careful not to rip the paper (this will happen if it was still to wet). Check that the cloth isn't creasing. Try to get it as flat as possible. After the paper is dry, flip it again and go over the cloth side.

After I did that I had less problems. The cloth still needed to be pressed with a vise because it was so thick, but it held.

I mismeasured the back of the bookblock though and had to do it all over again... Well, you learn through practise and the second attempt was much prettier as well.

I used marbled paper I got from that retailer from hell and then I again fucked up with the Cricut (forgot to mirror the letters). Otherwise I am very pleased with the result and my cousin (the recipient) was also quite happy.

Binding Details

Bookblock was premade from schmedt.de

Endpapers from the retailer from hell (that I'm not gonna link)

Cloth from taschen-zubehoer.de

[zhalfirin-binds]

Sometimes I get impatient when binding books (not a good combination I know, but well). After folding and gathering and pressing the sections/signatures there is still a step to do that just takes a moment, adding the endpapers to the outer sections. Now just tipping them on would not take that long, true, but I pretty much always do hidden cloth-jointed endpapers to enhance the paper and get a more durable connection between bookblock and case or some other sort of more complex endpaper. Those take time to dry and I can't rush that (much). So what I do is, I just start sewing with the second section, but keep a tail about 1,5 x bookblock length. That way I can sew the first section with the endpaper once it's dry enough for that. The sewing process is no different from any other section where I tie off after the section. I simply turn the book around so the signature I want to add lies on top and keep sewing.

[lovelyscot]

Folios->signatures -> bookblocks. Now time to trim the fore edges.

[tugbao]

Kitaplarda, kendimi bulmayı seviyorum.. 💚 #photo #book #bookworm #bookwoman #loveyourself #lines #bookblock #blok

[steelycunt]

So, for the hobby thing!! As your selfproclaimed manic pixi dream mutal I recommend either book binding (fun and very relaxing AND you can gift notebooks to anyone you know and like! Do your own bookblocks as sewing those is very fun and easy and you can use scrap cardboard and wraping paper for cover. Also instand ohmygosh I made a thing with my hands-feeling!!) or calligraphy! (very relexing, if you ignore the "community" around it. Will turn you into an ink and tip nerd though. But you now have the gift for any and all occasions for your elder relatives! And you can hang up so many quote and poems around you!! Also very cheap as you only need 1. a thing that holds your tip 2. your tip 3. Ink 4. paper that holds your ink without trouble 5. a script you wanna use and 6. what you want to write!)

hello my love!! BOTH of these sound super fun xx bookbinding would be lovely i was definitely one of those guys who would collect pretty notebooks and then be too scared to use them when i was younger AND i was always so obsessed with my handwriting and pretty calligraphy even though every teacher ive ever had has remarked on how unreadable my handwriting is so. think id definitely enjoy that!! :-)

[magnoliazul]

After months of painfully forcing myself to study for school exams (as well as being diagnosed with adhd and going through a burnout), I decided to rest and fully dedicate myself to my favourite thing - books. ❤️‍🩹

I'll be participating in a crafts market for the first time this weekend and I am so so nervous! This is one of the books I'll be selling there and I just hope people enjoy it enough to consider buying it.

I guess after this I'll officially be a (very) small business, and even opening commissions. But first I'll def have to post all the pictures I've been collecting of all the books I've been working on.

Please consider giving me a follow for support 🙆🏻‍♀️ - @magnoliazul.folio

[cmoroneybooks]

I really need ASOIF to be finished so I can be done thinking about it. This 13 year bookblock is not right. 

[strangeandforlornbooks]

The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow

Books I’ve Read in 2020 (14/?)

There was a space inside me, cupped and still. It was small as cupped hands; it was large as the sky. It was untouched and it was touch itself. It was empty and it was full. I held love there, like a treasure. I held my own name.

[astridfieuws]

#bookblock compose your own bookblock! chose your #cover color, #insidepages and #binding. books are #handmade and #unique. • more info on www.astridfieuws.com • #craftwomen #craftwork #craftmanship #artisan #artisanaal #artisanale #uniek #notebooks #schriftjes #livrettes #bookbinding #boekbinden #reliure #paperfurniture #papierwaren #papeterie #handmade #handgemaakt #faitalamain #astridfieuws #brussels #buylocal #madeinbelgium #handmadeinbelgium #smallbusiness https://www.instagram.com/p/CNk-6fbBboX/?igshid=mmc3u6wran1b

[zhalfirin]

Geschichten aus dem Mumintal - Tove Jansson (Tales from Moominvalley)

materials used:

bookblock - original book in signatures endpapers - tairei paper cover paper - laser printed publishing paper cover art - original by Tove Jansson (altered for this case) spine material - leather (vegetable tanned) endbands - buttonhole silk title - hot stamped with genuine gold foil

original cover

[aley-nag]

Endbands!!!

Endbands are gonna be the death of me, I swear.

In may I had a workshop where we could choose what we wanted to focus on and I choose endbands (don't ask me why. I like to torture myself).

I started with an endband that had more than two alternating colors. The trick is to just work in the new color as you would in the beginning. You have to do this every time you change colors. If your bands are quite small you have to do this very often. It also results in kind of a rug that's lining the back of your book. It's not fun and it takes forever (if someone has an easier way to do this, pleeeeease tell me)

First try, where I was still humble enough to choose wide bands and few colors...

Then I wanted to learn to do an endband that is "double-storied"(?). And because that was not complicated enough, I wanted to do it with five different colors. That resulted in this monstrosity and took me approximately 8 hours.

You start like you would normally do and you can glue the lower story to the spine. Then you have to add the second story and that one you can't glue down, because you need to wind the thread around it. You can kinda see the direction that it runs in the second picture. The knots on the front are the same. The threads that are hanging down are due to my hubris of changing the color after every loop. If you content yourself with two colors, you will not have that.

Behold the monstosity. It was very hard to glue all that thread down, but I managed. And I will never do that again.

After that I learned a very simple one, where you don't have the knots in the front, but you have to fix it to every section and you cannot glue down the core. But as I hate how my knots turn out, this will be my new go-to technique going forward.

Ignore how irregular the length is, this was an experiment. The beginning is quite fiddly, but after you connected the core to the bookblock it is relatively easy and the result is very even.

I also learned that because I favor dark colors I should dye the twine before I wrap it. Otherwise it will shine through if I leave even the smallest gap.

I also accidently used the same color scheme I was wearing that day :D