As the third book in The Wardenclyffe Series moves closer to completion, I’ve been continuing to learn more about the world of bookbinding. From the beginning of my bookbinding journey, I’ve always had an end goal of being able to bind one really nice edition of all the books in my series together. So far I’ve been primarily focused on the binding of the books themselves, but now I thought it was time to branch out and learn some new skills. When I bind the final version of the series, I want it to have a really nice slipcase to help protect it so I thought it would be good to start learning how to make one.

I decided that I’d start by making a slip case for the first two books in my series. I managed to source some really beautiful Japanese paper for the insides of each slip case that matched the overall color of the two books’ covers. And although you’ll hardly see this detail, it’s important to me that it’s there since I’ll know what’s inside. I also managed to find some nice book cloth in similar colors to each book so the slipcases would blend seamlessly with the spines of the books themselves.

I debated going back to these slipcases and adding more details onto the outside, but ultimately I decided I liked the more minimal look to them. Especially when you see the contrast with the details of the actual covers when you pull the books out of the cases. I think when I do the full series I’ll probably look for some fun decorations I can add to the slipcase, but for now I’ll keep these as they are. I’ll also have the third book soon so I’ll likely make another slipcase for that one to match the first two books, just have to source some really nice green book cloth first!

I think my next big bookbinding project will be learning to do some hand tooling with gold foil. I’ve already got a foil stamping machine which is great for embossing text onto covers, but I’d love to be able to design and make some fun patterns on the covers themselves. Luckily I’ve got a shiny new set of tools to help me with that endeavor! Hopefully one of my next updates I’ll be able to show off some of my progress in that area!