My binding of The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins!
This is definitely the thickest book I've made, at 600+ pages, and it contains dozens of illustrations by William Sharp from a 1946 edition, sourced from the best place on the entire internet (aka https://victorianweb.org). I had a lot of fun making sure the illustrations occur at the correct point in the narrative!
Paper Grain
For those not absorbed in the minutiae of bookbinding, the 'grain' of the paper is the way the fibres run, and effect the way the paper most naturally wants to fold. If you get regular printer paper and fold it in half to make your book, chances are the grain is going the wrong way. I always figured it was no big deal, but for this project I bought some short grain paper (where the grain runs the other way) - and I am frustrated that it genuinely does make a huge different to how nice the book feels to hold and flick through. It also stopped the warping and rippling which I thought was because of my lack of skill, rather than materials. Whoops.
Other materials
It uses stick-on endbands (I haven't ever plucked up the courage to try to sew my own!) and a bookmark ribbon which I reused from a cardboard gift bag. Endpapers are thick wrapping paper from a book shop.
The design is painted in acrylic paint, using stencils I designed and cit out using a Silhouette portrait vector cutter.
