Book of books, secret belgian binding with a twist

I finally finished my secret belgian binding book for the swap for the Hinges group. It took me quite a while to finish it. First trying and testing, then working out a concept and when I finally started making the book I ran into several problems. Making me want to cry, but I made it, it's finished and it's ready for shipping =).

I made some progress pics, some detailed shots of the finished book and a video, so you might want to go get a cup of coffee for this =).

The theme for the swap was "Books", any which way you wanted to interpret this. So I choose "Book of books" and wanted to make the book from an old library discard of the Hobbit.

So I ripped it apart. Only to find that I couldn't use the book block.

I could use the covers though and cleaned all the plastics off.

Then painted them with gold and copper paint.

I put the book block aside, figuring I might be able to do something with it. Just wasn't sure what, yet.

Made a spine and treated it the same way as the covers with the paints and glued some old dictionary pages to them.

Added some gold embossing.

And because the challenge at Simon Says Stamp, Monday challenge blog this week is embossing, I will link this book over there as well.

Tore the maps from the book block and glimmer misted them, with gold and walnut.

Crinkled them and then distressed them with gathered twigs distress ink.

Gathered up a bunch of papers. Found out I had run out of tea dyed paper and made some more.

Collected some quotes off the internet from my favorite books and authors.

Can you tell I am a Sci-Fi/ Fantasy girl?

Bound the book together with the same method I showed you in the tutorial.

But made a slight alteration to this, because I liked the threads on the covers to keep their triangular shape.

To achieve that, I tied the top and bottom threads from the four middle holes together. You can check the video to see where exactly.

I like the result.

The book got rather big, but I actually like that. It makes it cuddly.

The inside of the book.

With the first page of the book block from the Hobbit and a very appropriate ring paperclip =).

I also used some rub'n buff on the inside covers and placed the first quote on the front inside cover.

I placed the quotes at the top of each first page of a signature.

Made some pockets here and there.

The first 4 signatures were made with tabs and the last 5 each have a tag sticking out as a divider.

The tag also serves as a pocket and on the first of the last 5 signatures I inserted the last chapter from the book... in Dutch, so I doubt my swap partner can read it, but that's ok, she can use it for whatever she wants =).

I also included the distressed maps in the tag pockets.

And this is the back view of the book.

 All Finished.

A nice and cuddly book, she can use to write her own story in.

Ready to send off, but first I want to cuddle it a bit more, but I'm sure I will have send it off before the 20th september, the due date of the swap. I'm sure she won't mind.

So that's the end of my little adventure with the secret belgian binding, well for now at least, it's time for another project... My Round Robin Art Journal, but that'll be for another time. First I really need to catch up on some of the blogs I follow....

Thank you for watching and I wish you all a wonderful week.

also linking this to:

• Anything but a card: Hitting the books (#27), because I used a book to make a book with book quotes and book page inserts.
• Frilly and Funkie, anything goes