DIY Concertina Book–Part 2

In Part 1, I made the internal pages of the book. In this section, I will show you some work-in-progress pictures of the cover, and of course the final product.

By the way, I have left the completed pages under a pile of heavy books (you can use phone books) to flatten, while I went shopping.

I went to Melbourne Etching Supplies, and they have a number nice bookbinding cloth to choose from. I settled for a green/purplish one which cost below $20 per meter, including GST (a meter of material is enough for many books, since it is very wide – about 4 feet).

Leaving the cover material aside, back home, I used a matt board (acid free) and cut out the front and back covers – slightly bigger than the paper (about 0.5 cm on all sides). I measured the thickness of the internal pages and then cut the spine. (If you find that the size of the boards are too dissimilar of crooked, you can use a sandpaper to make corrections.)

Next place the boards on the cloth and cut out a piece, leaving about 2.5 cm around the outside (see photo on the left). Then draw the cover on the inside leaving about 0.1 cm space on the left and right of the spine (this will allow the book cover to fold nicely), as a guide for the next stage (gluing the boards to the cloth)

The lined boards should look something like the above photo. Glue the boards to the cover material. Ensure the glue covers the entire contact surfaces, not just the edges of the boards. (During this stage, have lots of clean white papers handy and clean along the way if any glue goes astray!)

Turn to the other side. Smooth down to sure that there is no air bubble trapped. At this stage, I placed a few big books to weigh down the cover for a few hours till the glue dries. This will prevent the boards from curling.

Then cut all 4 corners diagonally, leaving about 0.2 cm space from the corner of the board. Fold the 4 edges and glue.

The inside of your book cover should look something like in the above photo. Next we will tidy up the inside of the cover, as well as stick the pages to the book.

I paste over the inside of the back cover, then score the fold lines of the spine, to help the cover fold neatly.

Then stick page one to the inside front cover and we are done. Here I have placed a stamp on the spine.

The finished book – imperfect but I love that about DIY projects.

Would you have a go?