DRAW AWESOME ALBUM PART 2 – HIDDEN HINGE BINDING
The Hidden Hinge method
There are several ways of doing this, but I chose to make separate “hinges” from 1 1/2-in wide strips of card which I then scored and folded down the centre. These strips were inserted into the open edge of each page, left after the other three sides had been stuck together. Here they are, being painted with black acrylic paint, prior to being folded in half length-wise.
You can also make a continuous hinge piece by accordion-folding card, but you have to work out in advance the space required between each page to allow for embellishments on the pages.
Here is the spine of the book with all the hinges glued in place. I’ve supported the book vertically between two boxes so that the spine can be seen more clearly.
The whole thing is rather floppy at this stage, even though each side of the hinge is glued to alternate pages. It is necessary to glue something over the top of this to hold it all in place.
When we moved here, we had to have a new roof, and I asked the roofer to let me have an offcut of the roofing felt he was laying under the tiles. This stuff is similar to fabric Tyvek. It is a bonded polymer, breathable but waterproof, used in the building trade. It has the appearance of a woven fabric but it is not. It is immensely strong and will not rip. It takes acrylic paint very well.
The strip required two coats of black acrylic paint and I concentrated on other aspects of the project while waiting for it to dry. It will be stuck onto the spine once I’ve finished the end papers and title page.
