The book is alive!
What a nerve wracking week! I took my book block in to be trimmed down on the guillotine, and then couldn’t put off actually finishing it any longer.
Using the bookbinding cloth was terrifying as well, I only have so much of it so I don’t want to wreck any of it.
I did the spine first, so I could adjust it slightly, and will do the cover afterwards.
Screenprinting!
It took ages to make the cover, I could not get the spine lined up correctly for ages, and then I had put too much glue through the fine mesh that it just couldn’t handle it anymore. Luckily I had thought ahead and ordered several sizes of the spine art to accommodate different widths, so I was able to just move on to the next size and not fret about missing any of the detail. I’m a bit sad I won’t be able to have the small circular emblem on the spine, but to be honest the final width of the book is a tiny bit too small to really accommodate it anyway.
The screen is still doing very well, but I will need to figure out a different glue that is more screen friendly for future runs. I’ve been washing the screen and scrubbing it straight away, but the book binding glue is just too fierce!
Look at that glue though!
It really holds the copper leaf so well.
This one came out well, but the emblem and my name started degrading, so I switched to one of the other spine widths on the screen. The emblem was also slightly out of place, so I needed another go anyway.
Still came out a little bit wonky, I think in the future doing the spine on a separate, more durable bit of book cloth would work better. I’m finding the corners aren’t keeping up well, so it would be good to reinforce them anyway, and it would be a lot easier to register the screen on a smaller, separate piece.
Either way – I need to build a registration mechanism for the screenprinting portion.