I also do some bookbinding, but way too seldom, so this year I decided to make a diary, inspired by some lovely stickers I found in a shop. Themed "candy", I chose a light blue paper for the pages, candyfloss-pink for the endpaper and wedgewood blue for the cover. The candy stickers were to be set into a framed cutout in the front cover, behind 'glass', like in a shop window.
The body of the book was done first, bound and glued, finished off with the endpaper. Then the parts for the cover were cut from strong cardboard, the front cover backed with light cardboard to support the rectangular cutout.
The cutout in the front cover, backed with the lighter cardboard, is then covered with paper in a nice colour to provide a background for the stickers. Front, back and spine piece are then made into a complete cover before the stickers and the framepiece are glued on. As I noticed that some of the stickers were thicker than the depth of the cardboard I used, I had to improvise and, instead of just covering the cutout with transparent foil and putting a frame on top, I had to make a double frame to add depth to the cutout. So, two identical cardboard frames, transparent film sandwiched in between and covered with the same paper as the rest of the cover.
At last, the book body is glued into the finished cover - after the bookmark has been added. In this case, I went for a slender satin ribbon with a little pink-iced cake at the end. The cake is about 1.8 cm by 1.2 cm, made of pink satin ribbon, stuffed with cotton, topped with a little red glass bead and sewn to the end of the bookmark.
