Friday, May 15, 2009

Gripped by the Mini Book Frenzy - Again

In the photo above you see the new and improved third generation of Ritter Sport Mini books. The Siam paper worked well (I talked about my intent to try it here) and I am going to make several of these - you'll see them again. I actually finished the chocolate book yesterday, and today I was bitten by the mini book bug (again), and I am going to talk about the teeny tiny books in the front.
Instead of throwing them away I folded the scraps from cutting the paper for the ritter sport mini into signatures and bound them to a book block with the dimensions: 1.2cm x 1cm x 0.6cm, about 1/2 " x 2/5" x 1/5"
This was the first book block.
The first book block in the "finishing press" - glueing the spine.
still in the press with glued on head bands and a marker ribbon. I had to cut away a big chunk of the band to which the head bands are attached, but they still look huge on this tiny spine :-)
Here I am "trying on" the the raw cover. I like to make the covers too large (also on usual sized books) and only cut them to size after checking the fit of the text block.
I thought the covers had too much space to the spine, but was deceived by the small size.
First cover improved imworsened. Then I cut the covers to length,...
parsed a tiny scrap of leather for the spine. Which was a hell of y job, since I lack the knowledge, experience and skill to do so (and I was using a kitchen knife). Then I covered the cover, glued in the book - first one done.

With the headbands the book was a tack too high for its cover. - It must be possible to do better...
Second book block done - looks better!
Thinned another piece of leather for the book. this time a bigger one, because I wanted it all in leather. Results: Fingers hurting, holes in the leather, but - a piece in the middle of it would be big enough to cover my teeny tiny mini book. But just even so, it could get a bit tight in the end. And so I punched with a hole punch
the frayed holes to nice round eylets. Added some more, too. Glued the leather to the blue Lokta paper I was also using for endsheets on the book block.
And then, I had the weirdest idea of all - hand sewn headbands. - It is a leather volume, right? So nice headbands are a must:
Sorry for the blurred picture, the spot was too small for my automatic focus to catch it... Anyway, this is the first headband done. In the instructions it says: "Be careful not to cut through your thread, when cutting the core to size." I though: Who would be so stupid to cut the thread? And the answer followed immediately: Me:
So, back to work. Here's the first headband done:
And here's the second:
And this time it turned out well enough, so that I have made the photo above click enlargable (I mean: Click to enlarge!).
In the meantime I covered the cover and: Voilá the second micro book done:
Unfortunately I notice now that the books don't open well - the spaces at between spine and cover are way too small. I should have know from experience that one doesn't scale everything down when working small.
But I am resisting the urge to try a third one.
This was kind of a mad project. (See some more picture on Flickr.)
Have to get back to serious work.

Thanks for reading!

5 comments:

DangAndBlast! said...

Fun! I use the same clips when "pressing" my teensy book earrings. Should try them in leather sometime. (Should get over my fear of paring sometime, so I don't have to use only my crazy-thin and pretty expensive French leather and be restricted to smaller books that don't need much support from the leather!) Deine Bücher sind ganz niedlich :)

Billie said...

Great little books and well done on the hand sewn headbands, must look out for the book you mentioned the other week and try and get it.

Love the book press!
Little books are addictive aren't they.

Well done

Billie :)

Godelieve said...

Amazing little pieces! Can't believe how tiny these books are!!

peata said...

these are insane!
so cute

making mini albumsmini album blog

Büchertiger said...

Thanks for all the nice comments!

I gave one of them to Dymphie from Papieren Avontoren and she seemed to have like it :-) Have a look here:
http://papierenavonturen.blogspot.com/2009/05/50-books-26.html