About books and such

I was quite happy with how the cover was taking shape. It is already starting to look like what I envisioned!

But, what is a cover without a pretty title? For this I had two different modes of approach: for the first one I would make a kind of stamp of the title, which I would first emboss into the cover, after which I would stamp in the intended colour. The second one would be to create a stencil of the title and use a sponge to get the colour on.

For the embossing approach I again made use of my 3D printer. I basically made a thick rectangle on which I had a raised mirrored text with the title. Being a nerd among nerds, the title is of course in pre-reform Russian spelling, so Война и миръ: as good old Tolstoy would have written it himself!

Unfortunately I don’t have a vice on my workbench, so I thought I’d just try it with my own weight. Unfortunately this meant I also pressed the edge of the stamp into the cover. Not ideal and after stamping the title on there with golden paint (just your regular AP Gold) it didn’t look any better than it would have been without the embossing. Still good enough if you ask me.

I wasn’t too happy or unhappy with the stamped title, so I thought I’d give the stencil a go then on the spine. I also 3D printed this one. I used a sponge to dab the colour in, but especially on the author’s name the colour did not come through enough. I therefore painted between the lines with a brush carefully. Or so I thought:

Luckily acrylics can very easily be removed when they’re still wet, so I just redid the spine with a simple stamp of the title and author, without trying to emboss it this time. I think that this is what worked best in the end.