A New Cover

Last night I put my recently learned book making skills to a new purpose - making a new cover and binding for a damaged book. My daughter's college text book, purchased online and shipped via land mail, had arrived at its destination in a damaged condition. The text block was a bit skewed and the cover was bent at the corners and bashed in on the front. She was home for the weekend and had been reading the book during her train trip. While sharing some of the readings in the book, one of us came up with the idea that I could make a new cover for it. I couldn't resist the challenge. It reminded me of every other October in her childhood when she would come up with a Halloween costume idea that couldn't be purchased, and I would have to figure out how to make it. This was easier. Thanks to the Book Arts Roundtable, I have been working on my book-making, book-binding skills for a couple of years. But I had never taken apart a book to re-bind. That was the nerve-wracking part. Once it was apart I figured out how to secure the text block to the new cover I had prepared. I searched through my stash of papers and found one from Chena River Marblers that I must have purchased from Talas awhile back. That became the end papers - browns, blacks and golds. I needed something to distinguish the front from the back and so I asked for an image and she found the one that I transferred to the front cover (it's the beginning of Beowulf in the original Old English). While the new cover is functional and pleasing to the eye and hand, there are a few construction issues that I would do differently next time.