In Germany, we open our Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve. So I can finally share the gift I made for @joeysblog
We became friends six years ago through her Harry Potter fanfiction and I wanted to do something special. I decided to bind the fanfiction. It's a long fanfiction that's still going and therefore way too long for one book, which means I took the chapters she already edited, split them into the two school years and just printed them out.
After hours of copy pasting and formatting issues and everything.... Well, and then printing difficulties
But everything turned out so good!
I started out by printing all pages and just slapping glue over them to create one big text block (definitely would have been nicer to actually bind them with needle and thread but... I wanted the books to be ready for shipment as early as possible!)
While everything dried, I started on the cover art by recreating pictures I've found on Google (after coloring them, I put a coat of varnish over the pictures). I cut two DIN A5 pages of cardboard as well as a stripe roughly the width of the text block (for the spine), and just glued everything on some faux leather before gluing the cover art over it too. And repeated everything for the second book.
Yes, it's a bit crooked but that just adds to the charm!
Obviously waited for everything to dry too but in the meantime the first text block was done, so I could start on the second text block.
Well, while doing that I discovered that I made a mistake... I based the cover for book 2 on the width of the first book and not the second, so... Kinda was a tight fit for the second text block. Not that big of an issue tho.
It took a few hours, I put way too much glue on the second text block so drying took forever!
Anyways, I glued the first and last page of the text block on the cover, placed baking tin foil between the cover and the rest of the text block (to protect the other pages of the moisture) and it went back into the book press for the night.
After that I just had to write the title and school year onto the book spine. And done!
Best part was definitely seeing the surprised look on Joey's face! She was speechless and usually she never shuts up
Love you, @joeysblog and Merry Christmas again!
