Harry Potter: Hogwarts Textbooks

[Tenno]

@ecl: great, i am looking forward for a tuto

 

[ecl]

Pretty much done with the silver foil on the cover. I think I'll eventually rebind the book with new pages etc, but it'll be a while before I do that. The laser foil technique for sure would have been a much more efficient way to get the foil on there, but the leafing and leafing pen worked out ok, just took forever. I will write more on how I put this together soon for those interested!

 

[terryhimself]

Looks great! Nice job.

 

[AnneleenDV]

I've been selected with the last 3!!! (in the Harry Potter contest to become EA reporter)
I wanted to ask if you would please please please vote for the last time for me?

It's this link: EA Repoter Finale - Seven Days

Just scroll down and click on Anneleen De Vree and send!!

Thanks SO much in advance!! XXX

 

[AnneleenDV]

I'm sorry: this link: EA Repoter Finale - Seven Days

 

[sonicfreak04]

are you foiling that thing beside the cauldron?

 

[nurmengart]

Very nice work ecl.

 

[ecl]

@sonicfreak04, yes the lines/patterns around the cauldron are silver also, it's hard to see in the picture though as it's all lit up. I looked at the movie again and also noticed the pages are also gilded silver on the edges...something I've never noticed before. Wil have to consider that in the future.

@Monster_05 Thanks!

 

[juno]

How did your laser foil experiments go?

 

[ecl]

@juno I'm going to try it tonight. It think I might be able to get it to work...we'll see haha

 

[juno]

I usually over-print on the foil with ink jet, because you can just q-tip it off the foil when it comes out of your printer. Just remember that your success with the foil is a strange mixture of paperweight, heat, toner density, foil quality, and luck.

 

[ecl]

Interesting idea with over printing on the foil. I'll have to try that. I'm waiting on the shipment from UPS still....should be anytime now haha. I'll do some tests later tonight.

 

[juno]

Over-printing eliminates any registration problems with the art. But, the problem with what you're doing is that you have a lot tighter registration than most projects.

Here's an old ticket of mine with laser foil:

London to Hogwarts and the Hogwarts center section is all printed after the foiling.

No matter how mis-aligned the logo is with the Platform 9 3/4 text, it won't matter because I just wiped the bad ink off. I also found that if you use a document cleaning pad on the foiled item you remove a lot of the rough extra foil bits.

 

[kid2000]

where do you get lazer foil thats sound cool all on its own

 

[ecl]

@juno

I tried the laser foil first on a regular sheet of paper with text from the copier and it looked pretty crisp and nice, but the paper I'm using for the book isn't that smooth and has some fuzziness to it, so the foil didn't really stick that well unfortunately. I think the toner just doesn't react as well to the paper.

Yea you're right about the registration of the text, mainly because the text has shadow details around it and the patterns around the cauldron come right up to it ...and unfortunately I don't have my own laser printer, and had to go to a copy center to use their machine to get the text printed, and then tried to line everything up through trial and error on my inkjet. Those copiers suck so bad for accuracy..but I knew that going in lol. It came close but not good enough. I'm going to try out some different materials. It's a cool technique though!

It's pretty time consuming to find the best materials and techniques for sure, but I want to get this one as close as possible!

Also, your 9 3/4 ticket looks super awesome

 

[ecl]

After about a half dozen attempts, I finally got closer to getting the foil on the cover. I had to tear off the old one first, then use the heat transfer foil on a different type of paper, because the foil likes a very smooth surface to work...

lining everything up was a major pain. This one got close, but was STILL about 2 mm too low, but I figured I'd just stick with it because I ran out of foil lol. That stuff is pretty expensive. Shame it wasn't right on, but I might have just gone crazy if I kept at it. But the biggest problem i encountered was that I had to coat the paper before printing the rest of the image if i wanted it to be crisp, and that makes the paper slightly wrinkled and not feed as efficiently through the inkjet.

@Juno, I used your idea of overprinting the foil. I think it works well and also hides some inaccuracies that I encountered. This foil stuff was a looong learning process, but by far the cleanest and most crisp way to get foil onto paper.

 

[Barneyrfd]

Looking ever better ecl. :thumbsup

The only problem now is the rest of the book is more worn than the nice crisp foil. So...might have to put some wear and tear on that primo foil job. :lol

best,

bfd

 

[ecl]

@Barney Haha yea that's true. I'm going to use some very fine grit sandpaper and add some age to the foil. The heat transfer foil is actually fun to experiment with, but the roll I bought was like $25 for a tiny looking roll

 

[Patattack]

That's phenomenal! The aging and textures are very convincing.

 

[PhoenixVader]

Thought I would toss this out.

thomas