Make leather binding. About the workshop
Our workshop offers you a unique chance to buy gift books with author's leather binding without extra extra charges and long searches for a suitable edition. Here you will find a large number of gift editions. Our catalog is constantly updated with new books and gift boxes.
If you did not find the edition you wanted to buy on the website, then we will make its leather binding for you individually. You only need to call us and place an order.
We will need the following information from you:
1. The name of the book to be gift-bound (any book ever published).
2. Skin color (white, black, brown, burgundy, cream, green, blue, golden)
3. Wishes for design (name plates, engravings, metal elements, corners, coats of arms, etc. at will)
4. Wishes on the appearance of the book. With a single author's style of our bindings, each book is unique in its appearance. When ordering, you can indicate to us the book you like (from those presented on the site) and the master will adhere to the style of the specified layout when designing.
5. Wishes for creating a gift box-box (we know that in most cases a person who received a book in our box puts it in a prominent or significant place in his work or home space)
6. Wish for jewelry decoration of the book and box-casket with precious metals and stones.
In terms of terms, the production of the book takes no more than 2-3 days (more urgent release is also possible)
Nowadays, book lovers do not have to visit the library, sit in it for hours, taking notes on the necessary material. It is enough to make one click - and the desired book is already in front of your eyes. Fast and cheap. However, there are many reasons for transferring the electronic version of the book to paper. To whom the text is too small, who on the screen does not perceive it at all. And then it starts: the sheets change places, get lost, crumple ... What a pleasure it is to read, if it's a complete inconvenience. Don't rush to throw away your printouts - get your binding done in ten minutes. And the most favorite work can also be decorated with a chic leather cover.
Materials for work:
text printout - A4 format, 2 pages per back;
photo paper - 1 sheet;
PVA glue - 1 pencil;
old meat grinder - can be replaced with a special device;
kapron threads - 20 cm;
jigsaw blade - 1 pc.;
leather or its substitute - 35 x 40 cm;
sewing machine, wide stationery tape, a piece of medical bandage, gold paint, scissors, a brush.
Stages of work:
First stage: binding.
We take the necessary tools and materials.
We make a printout of a “book” on A4 paper in a text editor. On each sheet on both sides, 2 sheets of the future book are obtained. We bend the sheets in half, align. On both sides, we put short boards on the places of the folds of the sheets, we squeeze the future binding with a meat grinder.
With a jigsaw blade, we make transverse shallow cuts at a distance of several centimeters from each other.
Cut the thread according to the number of cuts. The length of each thread should be twice the height of the binding.
Thoroughly coat the cuts with PVA glue, filling them with voids.
We insert the threads into the cuts, leaving their ends free on both sides of the binding. We “drown” the threads in cuts. Let the glue dry, remove the meat grinder.
The second stage: we fix the binding.
We cut off a piece of medical bandage so that its length is enough for the length of the binding and for bends on both sides. From the paper we cut out a strip that completely coincides in length and width with the binding of the book.
We apply a thick layer of glue to the entire binding, on top of it - a bandage (with edges previously bent inward).
We apply glue to a strip of paper and smooth it to the binding over the bandage. Carefully smooth the entire surface of the strip.
Apply glue to the top of the book.
We smooth the ends of the threads and the edges of the bandage, while stretching it in both directions from the binding. Dry the book in a standing position (cover upside down).
The third stage: blank for the cover.
We print on photo paper (or paste prepared clippings on it) pictures for the title and back of the book. The size of the blanks should be 0.5 cm narrower than the width of the book. We cut out a strip from photo paper that exactly matches the size of the binding (both in length and in width).
In order to make cutouts in the skin according to the size of the pictures, we make stencils from plain paper. If you need perfect accuracy in matching the lines, you can use tracing paper or make a translation by attaching a picture and a top leaf to the window glass.
The fourth stage: we work with a skin substitute.
For the cover, you can use genuine leather or its substitute. In this case, a substitute purchased at the "fabric" store is used.
We apply on the reverse side of the skin blanks of the cover and binding. Do not forget to make a distance between them, slightly larger in size than the reduced width of the cover (about 0.7 cm each). Outline the outlines with a pencil.
We put inverted blanks-stencils on the traced places. The main thing in this stage of work is not to confuse left and right. We circle the places of future cutouts.
Cut out the outlined lines.
Fifth stage: preparing the cover.
We glue the pictures on photographic paper with stationery tape so that they do not get dirty in the future. Adhesive tape is glued only on the front side of the sheet, not wrapping on the back.
We apply glue to the places free from the picture of the photo paper.
We combine the cutout of the skin and the picture.
Gently, without stretching, press the skin to the glue.
Along the edges of the cuts we make a machine line, fixing the skin.
Cut off the corners of the cover.
Greetings readers of the online magazine "Handmade and Creative"! After the New Year's break, we again continue to delight you with new master classes and ideas. Today I remembered my childhood and how we always made all kinds of crafts before the holidays and then gave them to our relatives or friends. Today I will show you how I made a beautiful leather binding with my own hands and gave it to my friend, and he really liked it!
Required materials and tools:
- sheets of A4 paper or any other paper that you like and suitable for a notebook;
- a piece of leather or suede (everyone has leftovers or pieces of an old bag at home, if you look carefully, you can find a lot of good material that just lies around because you don’t know what to do with it);
- sewing threads are dense and strong;
- scissors;
- large needle;
- sewing machine.
Preparing the inside of the notebook
Take prepared sheets of paper, it all depends on the size of your notebook. You can simply fold the sheets in half evenly, draw a clear middle, or trim the edges if you want the notebook to be small.
Let's collect our sheets together, we will get two small notebooks, since the machine will not be able to stitch many sheets at a time, we will divide them into two parts. Now we will make a stitch in the center of one part of the sheets and the second with a sewing machine.
Now on our blanks we will make five equal marks with a pencil, on each of the parts, having previously measured everything with a ruler. We need these marks so that we can sew our blanks together.
Stapling notebook sheets
Let's do the firmware of our blanks. Let's take a needle with a thread (the thread should be strong and beautiful) and sew our notebook according to the marks.
Sew so that you get a beautiful seam on one and the other side of the notebook, as shown in the photo.
At the end, when you return to the point where you started sewing, tie a tight knot and cut the ends of the thread with scissors. As a result, you will have a beautiful seam on both sides.
Getting started with leather binding
Now it's time for the final touch - making our cover. To do this, take, measure and cut out the cover template from a sheet of paper, try it on our blank of the inside of the notebook (choose the size as you like, but somewhere around 3-4 centimeters you need to step back from the edge of the notebook), apply it to our piece of leather and cut out our cover.
Fold our cover in half and draw rounded corners with a pencil.
Then carefully cut them with scissors and you should get such a beautiful leather cover for a notebook, made by yourself, using simple tools at hand.
Cut out the remnants of the skin lace for tying our notebook
Our notebook is almost ready, it remains for us to sew our cover to the notebook itself. To do this, we will attach our notebook to the cover and mark with a pencil on the inside of the cover the points along which we will sew.
Sew on the leather cover
We sew our cover to the inside of the notebook carefully and in the same way as we sewed the blanks of the notebook together, as shown in the photo.
Having collected the notebook, fold it and see if the edges of the sheets are uneven and they are very visible, then they can be cut off, having previously measured with a ruler so that it is even.
That's all our master class is over. It turned out to be a very nice notebook, which is perfect for both your own notes and for a gift for a loved one.
If you liked the master class, then leave a couple of grateful lines to the author of the article in the comments. The simplest "Thank you" will give the author a desire to please us with new articles.
Embossing on the skin is a way of designing a cover with a long history. The embossing on the binding has not lost its popularity even today, when not only genuine leather, but also many other materials are used for finishing printed products. In this article, we will talk about existing technologies and the opportunities they provide.
Before we begin
Before moving on to the main topic, let's take a couple of seconds to define embossing. Actually, this technology consists in creating a three-dimensional, relief image. It is somewhat reminiscent of engraving or embossing, but it has one difference - the drawing is not transferred gradually, but immediately entirely due to being pressed into the base of a pre-prepared cliché.
Types and technological features
Two methods are now used to decorate printed matter, including fiction or record items.
blint
Blind (blind) embossing is very easy to recognize. Usually it is applied to thick cardboard or hardcover, covered with a soft material: artificial or genuine leather. Its distinguishing feature is the concavity of lines and contours, while the reverse side of the base remains flat. That is why this species is called blind.
To make embossing on leather, cardboard or other material, it is necessary to prepare a cliché (stamp), which will be used for indentation. As you might guess, the drawing on it is inverted, that is, all the elements that should be concave in the end are convex on the cliché and vice versa. Directly the depth of the pattern depends on the clamping force.
In the early days of this technology, dies were made by hand from soft metals such as copper or brass. Now, a highly detailed cliché made of hard alloy or polymer can be obtained in just an hour, since it is manufactured by a CNC milling machine in the industrial production of printed materials.
By the way, the stronger the metal chosen for the production of cliches, the more indentations it will withstand, and the longer the contours in the resulting image will remain as clear as possible. In this regard, polymer blanks lose out to metal blanks, but with their help you can save a lot when producing small runs of products.
A typical application for blitting is the application of monochrome logos or text to hardcover books such as diaries or notebooks.
hot stamping
The first and most important difference between convex and blind is the direction of the resulting pattern. If with a blind impression the contours are concave, then in the case of embossing the image turns out to be convex, while the elements can be located at different levels. On the reverse side, the same image is concave.
To create an impression, it is necessary to produce two blanks: a matrix with a concave image and a convex punch, with the help of which the thin base material will be distributed over the surface of the matrix.
Thick materials cannot be used here, so hot stamping is almost never found on the binding. The only exception is thin cardboard covers of glossy magazines. Much more often it is used for the production of postcards or, for example, business cards.
Additional features
Now blind and, especially, convex in its pure form are used quite rarely. Most often, to individualize the product, several different finishing methods are used at once, elegantly complementing each other.
So, for example, embossing is usually used to add volume to a pre-printed image, but a technology that often stands out as a separate item in the list of services looks much more interesting and attractive.
foil stamping
Foiling can be done in one or, more often, two stages. In the first case, the place under the stamp is covered with the thinnest sheet of foil and fixed simultaneously with the extrusion of the pattern. In the second, an impression is first made, and then the shiny finish is fixed by repeated pressing of the cliché or punch. Due to the fact that its sheet is very thin, the necessary details are easily torn off and remain on the finished product.
There are two technologies: hot and cold.
The fixing of the metallized film on leather, cardboard and other materials resistant to elevated temperatures is carried out by the first method. In this case, after pressing, the metal stamp heats up to 110-120 degrees Celsius, reliably fastening the synthetic "foil" with the binding. The only drawback of this method is the increase in time for fixation.
Cold is produced exclusively in two stages. First, an image is formed (most often by hot stamping), then it is covered with special glue, the foil is pressed, and the last step is the delaminating procedure - separating the foil base from the finished print. All this can be done automatically, which allows you to significantly win in the speed of production. And an additional advantage can be considered the possibility of using materials that cannot withstand heat.
By the way, the foil itself can now be not only gold or silver. It comes in dozens of different metallic shades, the most notable of which is mother-of-pearl shimmering in the sun.
Finally
We have considered all the basic methods and possibilities of embossing on the binding. Modern production capabilities allow the use of a wide variety of types of leather, fabric and paper as a covering material, which, coupled with additional finishing options (from full-color printing to metal fittings), provides the widest opportunities for individualizing products. However, it is the imprint, due to its simplicity and accessibility, that can be considered one of the main methods of decorating printed products.
Leather-bound books attract attention, and a person who sees such a publication seeks to pick it up as soon as possible and get genuine aesthetic pleasure from using it. The development of printing technologies has led to the fact that in bookstores and markets inexpensive books are sold with a simple uncomplicated hard or soft cover. Such publications are perceived as the subject of everyday life, and do not cause delight. Therefore, bookbinding is still highly valued, since such books contain a soul, they are able to deliver real aesthetic pleasure.
Restoration and binding of books
The appearance of the cover is the first thing a person pays attention to when picking up a book for the first time. The unusual design, the use of materials that are pleasant to the touch, makes people delight, and the desire to open and read the selected edition.
Book binding in leather is a great way to give a valuable copy a second life, and protect the publication from the influence of negative environmental factors and rapid wear.
However, the cover, in addition to the aesthetic function, is also intended to protect the book itself from damage, moisture, direct sunlight and excessive wear of the sheets. It is not surprising that for many antique publications the cover is subject to restoration or complete replacement.
Binding is a labor-intensive process that can only be done by professionals. The leather mosaic bookbinding workshop produces covers for old and antique rare books embossed with genuine leather. In addition, we are engaged in the manufacture of leather book bindings. Such specimens subsequently become suitable for use, and deliver an indescribable aesthetic impression to their owner.
You can order the creation of leather binding for any edition. We guarantee high quality, as our workshop uses high-quality pebbled leather. Here you can make a handmade leather binding: a dressed book will look stylish and bewitching, and is also reliably protected from damage and wear.
Custom-made genuine leather binding is the best thing that can bring an old book back to life, but we guarantee the highest quality of such a product!
