This is the first time I’ve ever worked in leather. Let me make the mistakes so you won’t have to.
You have no idea how many videos I’ve seen, how many tutorials I’ve encountered, studied tirelessly in preparation for my new project. I’ve bound a book before, but not dealing with leather. The tricky part is going to be the end pages I know it!
So, without further ado, here we go!
Firstly, what I wanted to do was find a book series that had covers I really wasn’t a fan of. No way was I going to deface a book with a perfectly good cover in my first attempt at bookbinding with leather. Just writing in my books gives me great pain, I could never bring myself to willingly hurt the poor thing. I found a trilogy that I had read a long time ago, and having bought them on kindle, wanted to hold tangible versions of them. They took longer to come than they should’ve (Is this a sign??)
One thing I did not have, which is very important when rebinding in leather, is to find the right thickness of leather and cardboard. The leather I chose could’ve been not as bulky, but it’ll do.
Taking off the existing covers was surprisingly easy. (If you don’t count my mom crying bloody murder while I did so). Next up was to find the end pages for all three books. This is a fantasy series so I thought having different fantasy-esc end pages to each one would be fun!
I measured the book’s covers and spine and traced them out on cardboard, making them only slightly (like an eighth of an inch slightly) bigger than the book itself. I placed the cardboard pieces where they should go and taped them together so that there would be enough space between the covers and the spine. I traced the covers onto the leather, adding an inch around the perimeter. Using Elmer’s glue, I glued the leather to the cardboard.
My plan for the next step was to add some stamps representing each book. But the leather I had was already treated so no imprint of the stamp would hold. So I went on to plan B, which was to create stencils using a Cricut and paint on the title and author’s name. After much trial and error, it ended up working and I didn’t have to move on to plan C which was nonexistent.
The last time I attempted gluing end pages to the covers, I put on too much glue. A thin layer of glue will suffice, and I knew that. However, my ‘thin layer’ was someone else’s ‘thick layer.’ So yeah, dial back on that.
Once you have the end pages glued into place, let them sit in a book press (or below a stack of heavy objects if you’re cheap like me *wink wink*) overnight.
The next morning, the glue should be dried, and you know have successfully bound books in leather. The last step for my books was to add some corner protectors. They’re very easy to install, simply pound them in and make sure they’re secure and snug against the book’s edges.
If you want to go the extra mile, some fun things to add are more stamps (if you have the right leather that is). Stamp a pretty border or the book’s title and author’s name on the cover and spine. However, lettering stamps are crazy expensive (unless you know where to look…. *Cough cough* artist black market *sly look with a singular eyebrow raised*) and a border stamp is time-consuming to make on your own. Without the right tools, things can take forever and become extremely frustrating pretty quickly.
This is the final result!
Not too bad for my first go around! Though some things I would’ve done differently would be to not cut the leather where the spine and cover meet. It doesn’t give a polished look. What I would’ve done differently would be to just glue it down with the rest of the cover. I also would’ve added more space between the covers and the spine itself. Not adding enough space doesn’t give a defined spine as you see here. Scoring the spine so it has some flexibility would also be something to try.
Another thing I would like to try in the near future is using gold leaf foil. Based on my *ahem* not very extensive research, there’s a specific glue to use the foil should just adhere right on.
And voila! My leather bookbinding project was a success in my opinion, it was the very first time binding a book in leather. I may have a habit of jumping straight to the trickier stuff after only dabbling in it before, but hey! To get a head start you need to jump in the deep end.