With Michele’s baby shower book, you can see one form of accordion book. I wanted this card to stand up for later display, so I used another type of accordion fold that allowed me to tell a story on both sides of the card (it’s technically a book, but we’ll stick with card because that’s the function it was serving).

Because this couple is game for a joke, I designed the front of the card to appear just as sentimental as all the store bought cards they’d be receiving. But the moment you unfold the card, one side shows a collage of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with the heads of characters, people, and pets that the couple loves. The other side shows the pyrotechnics from a Kiss show above which I hand lettered a portmanteau of the couple’s names (not shown because I apparently only grabbed in-process shots) in the style of Kiss’s logo. I saved space on the back of the card for the note (also not pictured).

Should you commission a card or book like this, be warned: may induce head banging!

In 2018, Max Shafer of Glenn’s Tattoo Service Inc. in Carrboro, NC asked me to work with him on a custom portfolio. After meeting several times to discuss what functionality and aesthetics he wished for in his book, we settled upon a half calf case binding.

Because Max is a tattooer, he needed a book that was durable and could contain photos. In order to achieve both of these and stay within Max’s desired aesthetic, I modified the case binding to make room for the photos. A standard photo album has a sturdy spine that’s as wide as the book might possibly get if every page were filled with pictures. In order to accommodate the bulk of adding photos and photo corners, I had to trim out parts of or entire signatures, making more room in the spine.

Now, while this solved one problem, I also knew that the gutter of Max’s portfolio would still experience stress due not just to the bulk of the book and the removed signatures, but also due to the regular and none so gentle turning of the pages by his customers. With this in mind, I let Max know that I’d be back in after the portfolio had seen a month or so of use to doctor up any pages that proved weak. Sure enough, two pages needed a slip of paper pasted into the gutter to secure them back together.

The sigil on the cover of the book, the runes on the spine, and the runes covering the endpapers were selected by Max after I investigated with him which ones would represent the tone he was trying to set with his portfolio. The sigil I hand drew. The endpapers I hand lettered in red ink and painted in red acrylic. The runes I sewed into the leather prior to gluing it to the covers (black goat hide from Pergamena Leather & Parchment’s dyed leather scraps).

To further stabilize the book, I also sewed beaded endbands into the head and tail of the spine. These are most often decorative in more modern books, simply pasted along the hidden space between the spine of the textblock and the spine of the covers; however, Max’s portfolio required the added stability of true endbands since the spine was already going to endure rough handling and pressure.

To see the portfolio in its home and in action, check out the following photo and video.

For a mini photo tour of the book, check out the following gallery.

The virtue of the Coptic stitch binding is that it lies flat, so it’s ideal for writing in, though it does provide a challenge if you want to use it as a photo album because there isn’t much room for the spine to expand. To see the work around for this, check out my blog post on the portfolio I made for Max Shafer.

Michele wanted a personalized first page with Colin’s name and birthday, so we worked together to decide which of my childlike lettering styles she preferred, settling finally upon a style that look like stackable wooden block letters.

The resulting book could not be more adorable!

The food place cards that I hand lettered for the shower’s dinner were too numerous to all fit across the pages, so I added an envelope for the remaining cards. That way she could swap them out with the ones displayed as she desired. For more details on the items I made for the baby shower itself, see the post Baby Shower Book, vol. I.

Michele also had a number of cards from the baby shower that she wanted to keep together, so she handed them over to me to experiment with.  She didn’t request anything further than having them combined in some way that they would store together in a decorative way. Since she already had a box for the baby shower book (again, see post Baby Shower, vol. I), I thought it might be fun to have a more decorative binding that would make even the spine part of the display appeal. I bound all of the cards together using a Coptic stitch to create a sweet little book of well wishes for her to look back on.  One of the cards was shaped as an air balloon, creating a gap right where the punch for the binding thread would go through, so I solved the problem by adding a paper insert of a coordinating color.