At a recent meeting of a local mixed-media group, new friend Livia handed out some old encylcopedia volumes. The books were hoplessly outdated, but had lovely embossed covers and beautifully colored end papers. I snatched one from her happily.

During the same meeting, Livia shared a book she had made. Bascially, she’d removed the page block completely, and inserted her own pages. As I was flipping through it, I had an idea for a similar type of book, using different techniques.

First, I removed the page block. Having done this on several books since I worked on this one, I’ve learned there are two types of end paper treatments: either the end paper is folded in half and glued to the page block close to the spine, or it’s cut and stitched into the page block. This book had the second type of treatment, so I simply cut the stitching with a craft knife, and gently persuaded the cover to come away from the block. If it had been glued, I could have gently pulled the end paper away from the block before cutting, leaving the whole piece attached to the book.

The result of cutting the page block away—an empty cover. Looks kind of sad, doesn’t it?

Now, I want to split the spine of the book, to turn it into two separate covers. The quickest way to do this is to simply fold the book at the spine and crease it, then flip it open and mark along the crease. Cut with a craft knife to split the cover in two.

The spine of the book felt a little flimsy to support the binding I had in mind, so I reinforced it. I didn’t have any decent supplies for this, but I did have some black duct tape. Since this portion of the book will not be seen ever again, I decided to give in to my white trash impulse, and use the duct tape. Ideally, I would have glued a strip of leather in with some decent glue, to keep the softness and flexibility of the spine, while giving in some reinforcement.

Next, I did some work on the exterior of the book. I decided to do a verdegris patina—I thought that sort of blue-green color would look lovely with the endpapers, and the finish would bring out the embossing details on the cover. I grabbed a bottle of metal basecoat, and painted it on, and when it was dry, I splashed on a bit of Patina Green and waited. Nothing happened for a long time. Then I started seeing tiny flecks of rust. Not good. I realized that I’d painted the book with the wrong basecoat for Patina Green, and that the chemical reaction just wasn’t happening. I washed the chemicals off, and let the book dry, which left me with a plain metal basecoat again. I had two choices—dig up the right basecoat, repaint, and hope that the right chemical reaction occurred when I applied the patina, or go with the chemicals intended for this particular basecoat. Well, rust would be OK with the endpapers, too, so I went with it. (Aren’t you glad to know that sometimes I completely screw up a project?)

With my covers now rusted and dried, I prepared the spine for binding. I wanted to use a piece of vintage wood ruler, attached with either wire or twine. I trimmed the ruler to size, and marked four holes in the center of the spine flaps. I punched the holes with a plain old paper punch.

Next, I created a template for pages. I used a piece of cardstock for this, lining it up with the endpapers of the book, and extending it out past the spine, then folding it back on itself. This created a page template with a folded tab to be tucked inside the spine. My experience with books like this one is that putting in flat pages often creates a book that flares out along the outer edge instead of laying flat. By folding pages back on themselves at the spine, creating a bit more bulk, the book will lay flatter when bound. Many paper photo albums are created using this same folding technique, allowing room for photos to be added in later without causing the book to flare open from the bulk.

Using the page template, I went in search of “pages”—papers, but also old photo folders, manila envelopes, wrapping paper folded into pockets, old dictionary pages. Whatever was laying around, and in the same general aqua/rust/manila/cream color palette was fair game. Some pages were too large for the book, and were trimmed down. Some were smaller—not every page had to be the full height and width of the book. I opened up the photo folders, and used their flaps as the spine section of the page.

Once all my pages were cut and punched according to the template, it was time to assemble the book. Since the pages were such different sizes and shapes, I needed a way to stack them and hold them in place until they were bound. I pushed four long screws through the holes in the back cover, and slid the pages down onto them. They were perfect for keeping everything aligned.

Some pages were particularly thick, like the manila envelopes and the photo folders. I wanted to give these a little more depth at the spine, so I cut strips leftover from trimming, and inserted them both on top and underneath those pages.

Last onto the screws was the front cover. When I was happy with the alignment of all the pages between the covers, I clamped everything together at the edge of the spine. This allowed me to remove the screws, leaving four clear holes from front to back for binding.

The binding for this book is really simple. I placed the vintage ruler over the holes, then wove wire down a hole, back up the next one, over the ruler, and down again.

Here’s the rusty result: