Two more sketchbooks

I made two more sketchbooks this week, another Necronomicon and a Spellbook-themed one. I won't do a full build log about them, only a short description.
Both books are A5 sized, and have 100 pages of 100 gram/sqm drawing paper. They are for sale in my Etsy store.



The Necronomicon
First, the Necronomicon. I have already made a few of those, and with every new one I try out something new. This time, I decided to make it look like several parts stitched together. The stitches are made using modeling clay, with holes for the threads pre-made. It was quite difficult to apply the crumpled paper for creating the leather effect, I had to use several pieces of paper. For all my previous books, I used one large piece of paper for the entire cover.

The threads are pieces of unbleached flax string, glued in place using cyano acrylate glue. I tried this on the back first, it was an experiment after all. Good thing I did that, because I almost ruined it! After all pieces of string were glued in place, I applied a coat of varnish. This soaked the strings, made them stiff and also provided some additional adhesion. To my horror, in some places the glue had turned into some sort of white goo! I had to paint over it again to camouflage this. It turns out the glue required more time to completely harden, so on the front I waited long enough before I applied varnish.

The Spellbook
This is something new. This book has an inset pentagram on the cover. It required a lot of precise cutting. The pentagram is made using thick cardboard, painted copper. The same for the corner ornaments, wich took forever to cut. The circle around the pentagram has runes on it. I'm not gonna say what it says, only that I had to replace an "Y" with an "I" because there's no rune for "Y".

I really liked how this turned out. I'm thinking about making some silicone molds for creating cover ornaments, because they take too long to make from scratch every time. Not to mention resin pieces are a lot more durable than cardboard!