I made a story book for a young friend. It describes an evening we spent together back in December. Here are some of the illustrations:
Title page. 
The long route home. 
I have forgotten the key. How stupid is that? 
The rules are explained. 
I am told off. I didn’t follow the rules. 
Here’s the view of the table: from above! 
We rush. 
On the way home. 
I present the book. 
End page. 
Attribution.
I made the illustrations by cutting shapes out of the coloured parts of magazines. Magazine pages are suitably strong and luxuriously glossy. Sometimes the pictures have textures which are helpful to the theme. The figures are about an inch high or less. It was very fiddly.
I decided to give the book a hard cover. Out there in the wild, it would need some protection. I’d not done a hard cover binding before. I examined several hardback books and had a go. Here are some pictures of the construction process:
The total mess of my materials box. Trying to find something suitable for binding a book. 
Ruggedising the binding. 
The binding is made stronger by adding pieces of silk and PVA glue. 
The cover: the spine is a piece of linen curtaining. 
Inside view of the cover: the cardboard spine is kept in place by some Japanese paper, which is strong and flexible. 
Close up of the top of the spine: linen and Japanese paper. 
Testing that the spine bent OK. It did. 
The spine bends fine. It already looks quite authentic. 
The inside of the book and the cover, ready to go together. 
The inside of the book. 
The cover. 
I covered the cover in some amazing paper I found. 
Covering the cover. 
The cover centre. 
Cover, centre, close up. 
Now I glue in the pages. 
I realised that the cover glue must not go to the edges. So I put a length of washi tape (green and white striped) to remind me not to go crazy with the glue. 
The back end-page ready to glue in place. 
The front of the finished book. 
Here’s the spine. 
The spine: not perfect, but good for a first attempt. 
Spine successfully opens out flat. 
See the wonderful paper of the cover. It shines.
It worked well! It remains to be seen how it fares. It’s out there now, being read and enjoyed by one of the characters in the story.
Jane Sketching 
Seeing the process of making the book is almost as wonderful as the book itself. Thank you!
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I’m so glad it gave you pleasure! Thank you for commenting.
The reader of this story book is only about half way through his first decade of life, and although he is respectful of books, he has not yet acquired the dexterity of a museum curator in handling fine art. So I judged that a hard cover was a good idea, and that internal ruggedising was necessary. So far, so good. He could read it all the way through, which is an achievement for us both, and the book is still robustly intact.
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Absolutely wonderful! Love the result and fascinated by the process.
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Thank you cybaea! It was fun to do. I was amazed at how those little cut-out people seemed to be so expressive. And making the book hardback was a whole education.
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