Hand-made Leather Book
I’ve always loved books – not just reading them, but the actual physical objects. The fantasy/horror trope of a tome filled with forbidden knowledge always struck a chord of fascination with me. So I decided to teach myself bookbinding (isn’t YouTube amazing?).
I laid out the pages in InDesign – filling them with magic spells from various D&D sources, and old anatomical illustrations. Then I printed them on some thick, parchment-like paper and sorted them into signatures. I built a bookbinding sewing frame and sewed all the signatures to thick cords (you can see the four cords bulging out on the binding). I cut some flat pieces of wood to the right size for the covers and drilled holes for the cords to attach into. Then I carved a skull decoration out of basswood, painted it and glued it to the front cover. I got some goat leather, cut it to size, glued, and wrapped it all up.
I like to imagine this as an actual ancient artifact from some arcane library. Whenever I join a new gaming group, I pass it around like a guestbook, and have people write notes in it as if they were sorcerers, documenting the results of their magical experiments.
