Fledgling Book Binding

My favorite quote, from my favorite book is as follows: 

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

I'm not sad, and I haven't been debased of late, but I've always hankered to learn book binding. A YouTube video on book binding entered the scene and now pieces of sketching paper have been cut - nay, shredded - then sewn into 'signatures' which were bundled up, and hand stitched into a bare bones book. Acid-free glue was liberally applied to the book spine, then was used to adhere bits of netting and linen strips to secure the bundles of paper.

Fledgling book, glued, stitched and read for linings, end-papers and such. 

These first 2 books have leather covers. The leather was purchased as 'scraps' more than 2 decades ago. Sometimes I buy stuff now, and figure out what to do with years later. So at last the leather scraps have found their calling. The two photos of the black book was the first book I completed.  It has a strap with a key at the end, that holds the journal shut. The strap and key can be wrapped in any old arrangement, though my favorite is the one to the right, which looks rather like a star, and is my favorite. The journal has two ribbon markers each with a tiny key at its end. 

Did not come up with the 'key in a slot' idea on my own. I got the ideas from stuff on line. However, the cover has a flap, and a pop through slot for the key, and that was my own idea. 
 

The 'end pages' in books I've made thus far, are
composed of Etsy purchased hand made paper.

Unfinished book
with cabochon

So... what the hell is the point of making one's own leather 'empty books'? Uh... Just wanted to get the feel of how books were once-upon-a-time hand-made. The feel of making one's own book is AWE-SOME. So far I've completed 2, and am working on a third, shown on the left. Love the butter soft leather, and metal clasps were fun to rivet onto the leather, and look so cool.

This 3rd journal is not complete as yet. The cover isn't even glued to the book as yet. There is an experimental agate cabochon poking through cut out leather. It looks rough and I'm not at all sure what to do to finesse it a bit. Well that's why all this is experimental, yeah? 

Next I hope to master leather tooling so my leather covers can be imprinted with pictures, borders and such. I'll get there eventually, or so I hope.