spockandawe:

Okay, I love making a nice thick book, but there’s something about boxes that is just SO rewarding. Now, who here has heard of a peller pop-up box? I have to add a disclaimer that even of this post, I have made… three whole boxes, ever. But my personal take is that what’s the point of diving into a craft if I’m not gunning for a target far above my skill level? The ambition gives me a thrill, I don’t have to feel bad if I fail, and if I succeed, the rush is SUBLIME. And now I have a box with a mechanism (a ribbon) that pops the book out of an inner sleeve when I open it. I’m in love.

This was a learning process and a half! The only instructions I can find for this are some handwritten notes from a class in 1990, and the person who posted those notes also posted a number of critiques of the technique as described in the class. Also, the class notes (and addendums) come from an expert perspective, catering to experts. I’m an enthusiastic amateur who’s still learning basic competence with leather. I was smart enough not to do a leather slipcase, but overconfident enough to cover my spine and edges in leather, haha. But even though I have a LOT of notes for what to tweak next time, I love it SO MUCH

I arbitrarily decided to work with my millimeter binding of ‘and love unbolts the dark’ by blackkat for this experiment, because it’s small, it’s one of my favorites, I had more of the leather I used for its edges, and I thought I had more of the cover fabric and it would be a good match to one of my yellow marbled papers. As you can probably tell from those photos, things didn’t quite go that route!

First, I couldn’t find the fabric. It might be in here somewhere, but I have FAR too much fabric, lmao. But I did find a lot of this dark green one, in the same line, and with some lovely color overlap, and a nice aesthetic match for the leather. And then I also realized that the marbled paper was a Lot in comparison to the rest of what I was pulling together. So I left it as a liner for the inner slipcase, to tie into the yellows of the original fabric. Then I dug up an embossed teal paper that matched the dominant palette of the new fabric, and went for broke. And I love this so much, truly, it was a headache trying to wrap my head around the instructions and I still have some minor complaints about the process, but I am so, so pleased right now. I would joke about how little time it will be before I do this again, but… I’ve already started