A Really Useful Book

[airhead]

I am putting a couple of things together for my son's birthday. Previous years have seen a Grail Diary, a lightsaber, and a bunch of other stuff. This year, I thought that I'd do some "Mirromask" things. Since everybody wants something useful for their birthday, I tried a shot at a replica of "A Really Useful Book" that helps Helena through her adventures.

This was a very fast project - the pages were scrap copier paper, sew in 10 signatures. I wrote the text pages using pen and ink. There's only about four pages shown in the movie. I found another couple in a book novelization and left the remainder blank.

The cover was salvaged from an over-sized photo album. It looked like the right color and texture (more or less). It's that textured finished paper.

The prop looks to have the cover title and spine text embossed and while I thought of various ways to go about trying that, I opted for stenciling gold spray paint. I cut the stencils from masking tape - really tedious! And it looks like I got the cover crooked! I didn't have a detailed cap of the spine, so I used a font that looked close enough (that one I got straight).

It didn't turn out too badly, I'll use a higher rag content paper and get the cover better next time.

Now, all I have to do is crank out a key today to go with the book...

David

 

[airhead]

Re: A Really Useful Book - Plus the Key

I wanted to add a Key to the book, so I cut this one out of 1/8" aluminum plate using a power scroll saw (it works pretty well if you take it slow). I cleaned it up using various needle files and buffed it out with a buffing wheel. The inset was done with a Dremel (not so happy with that, but it worked).

I know that it's not nearly three dimensional enough, but I can get it in the mail tomorrow, which was the goal.

Comments?

David