This post was created to be the next step in the book binding process: Joining the bound pages to the Hard Cover.
For information on how to make a hard cover Click Here to see my previous post.
This will be my second attempt at bookbinding. My last attempt at putting all these elements together did not work out perfectly. There was a gap when I closed the book. To see more about my first attempt at bookbinding as a whole, Click Here.
To make sure my issues from the previous attempt didn't happen again, I played around with different ideas. This is what worked.
- Apply glue to multiple places:
- The hard cover inside spine
- The spine of the bound books
- The back side (opposite of bound pages) of the card-stock you attached to the pages.
- ***If you want to add a bookmark or two, now is the time. Just measure them out and apply them to the spine.
- Start attaching the bound pages by applying the spine to the spine of the hard cover.
- Before applying the rest of the card-stock to the hard cover, check to make sure your card-stock is completely flush with the cover- leave no space.
- For mine, you can see I have a gap between the spine and the cover, which is just vinyl. (see below.
- To make this work, I had to line the gap with the card-stock as well. To do this, I laid the card-stock over the space and used the end of a crochet hook to fill this length of the cover (see below).
- I then firmly applied the rest of the card-stock flat to the cover.
- You now want to let it sit for several hours and dry in place. The best way to do this for me was to find 2 heavy items that could apply pressure to the cover, but holds up the bound pages. I used a utensil holder and a stack of heavy coasters (see below).
To complete the look, I used my Cricut machine to create the vinyl design and logos. Choose what you would like, cut it, and apply.
***I highly recommend using Cricut Brand Vinyl for things with this much detail, it was designed for this type of thing. Other vinyls don't do as well.
- For the logo, I copied the logo from the website, uploaded it to the Cricut Design Space and cut. I made two versions. A big one for the front cover and a smaller one for the spine.
- I then wanted to number each one for each level. For this I just used the 'Add Text' function on Design Space and typed the number. I then went to the 'Image' tab on the left hand side of the screen and searched for 'frame' and chose I liked. I then framed it around the number. I then applied it to the top of the spine. I did the same thing for the color of each level, and applied that to the bottom half of the spine.
- For the design, I started by typing the level color with the same font as I did for the spine. I then copied the same frame I used for the spine and resized it to fit around this text. I then cut and applied it.
- After those steps, I decided I wanted to add a design on the front cover and possibly the back cover.
- Usually while I am browsing on Pinterest, I find beautiful designs that I save for possible use later. This was one of those times.
- The image I chose, I uploaded to Cricut and manually deleted all the negative space. I then carefully weeded out all of the negative vinyl space. This is so time consuming and tedious because of the fine details of the design.
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| Photo from Cricut.com |
- I then wanted to add a design to the back. I saw a project on the Cricut website to add a lace design to a clipboard. See picture on the right from Cricut.com.
- The pattern is called, 'Chantily Lace Border' and is free with Cricut Access.
- Now this was very ambitious to do just for the back cover, but it was worth it in the end (I think). If I thought the other design was time consuming and tedious, I really was prepared for this.
- It took me over an hour or two over two nights to weed out all the details.
- ***I highly recommend using Cricut Brand Vinyl for things with this much detail, it was designed for this type of thing. Other vinyls don't do as well.
I then applied all the vinyl and got my finished product:
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