BIND AND WAX MELT.
As I had previously stated I wanted to Make the book look very traditional, to match the traditional aesthetic of the yankee candle brand. I had looked into the traditional bind of books (a case bind) However I then reconsidered how this would work as my front and back pages are printed on mount board. In order to produce a case bind, one must create a skeleton for the book which is then covered in bookram to create hinges between each piece of board. I wanted to leave my book uncovered with the pieces of board showing (As I had digitally printed them) and so I had to think of a way that I could bind the book, without compromising the classic aesthetic I was trying hard to achieve.
I asked some other students if they had ever printed onto mount board, and used these as the front and back cover when binding a book. One student informed me of a simple bind he had done.
Taking the mount board (top) place two pieces of inner paper on the inside face of each page. Place all the content pages (cut out seperately - no folds) inbetween the pieces of mountboard in inner paper. glue up the spine, getting as much inbetween the spine of each page as possible, then glue a piece of mesh down the spine to secure.
I took all of my book pieces down to vernon street and began working on the bind. I cut inner pages from red paper to match the rest of the book aesthetic. Red is a strong colour used throughout the yankee candle brand taking pride of place in their logo, candles, and packaging.
I grouped all of these pieces together in order into a stack, and cut two pieces of grey board to put either side of the stack to protect the front and back cover being damaged by the press. Once all the pages were flush against the spine, I secured the mass of pages into the press
Using my finger I applied two layers of PVA glue to the spine for extra hold, attempting to get glue in between each of the pages so that none of them would come loose and fall out.
After leaving the glue to thoroughly set for 20 minutes, I cut a piece of mesh to fit the spine. This will secure all the pages in place, and give them something to stick to. I could have left the bind at this point, however a mesh bind is not a detail that you would find on a Yankee candle product. Therefore, I cut a piece of red bookram, so that it would overlap the spine by 0.5 mm on each side, and cover up the mesh, leaving the bind look much more clean, and more so in tune with the brand.
Next I began making the Wax melt which I would be placing on top of the book where the red ribbons cross. The design I came up with was simple as shown previously.
I made the design on illustrator for an easy export into Ethos the laser cutting software. I set up the wax melt so that It would raster certain parts and cut out around the edges to create the circle imprint.
I raster cut the detailing of the design so that the wax would press into the crevices, I went over this 3 times on the laser cut to insure that they were deep. I also cut out 4 plain circles to stick on the black of the plate to make a cylinder like handle. I hot glue gunned this to the plate for extra security and left it to dry.
Next I drew around the plate onto a piece of red paper, this is so that when I melted the wax, I knew where to drip the wax, and how big a puddle of wax I would need to fit the size of the plate.
At this point I lit the wicked wax stick and began melting the wax into a large 'puddle' against the paper.Once the puddle was large enough and of a similar thickness throughout I created a moisture barrier on the seal by covering the plate in water. I had read in some instructions that I needed to let the plate sink into the wax for around 10 seconds until the wax cooled.
However when I pulled the plate away, I realised that I hadn't let the wax cool for long enough and therefore it didn't work. I realised in the instructions I had read that the wax seal being made was much smaller, and therefore for my design I would have to increase the cooling time.
For the next attempt I followed exactly the same routine however I held the seal down for much longer, in hopes that when I pulled up the plate the wax would be cool enough. The second attempt worked better than the first however It still did not work. I think that this was due to the fact I was only rubbing water onto the plate to create a barrier between the wax and the wooden plate. As I didn't have much melting wax left, this would be my final attempt, and so I decided to substitute water for oil in the hopes this would create more of a barrier.
Lifting the wooden plate up I realised that my final attempt was much more successful than the first. The wording on the wax melt was fully readable in comparison to the first two attempts. Unfortunately It didn't have as great a shape or shine usually seen in wax melts, however I was more happy to have a readable melt than a more aesthetically pleasing shape.
Happy with the third design I glued this to the front of the book, completing the parcel like aesthetic I was looking for.
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