I Made the Percy Jackson Books Even Better

you know looking back at my childhood all signs point to that i probably should have been a percy jackson kid but i just wasn't which is why this brings me no pain oh okay maybe it has a little pain i just paid like 20 bucks for the set well no turning back now [Music] all right before anyone gets too genuinely upset about the book crimes that i have committed today let me explain so as many you probably already know there's the new live-action percy jackson coming to disney plus and a lot of people are excited about it seeing that the original author is helping make the series but like i said earlier i've never read percy jackson which is very surprising because i was so into greek mythology in like elementary and middle school i don't know how i just never read it it wasn't even because like i was like a harry potter kid instead was it like a harry potter versus percy jackson thing am i just making up was it twilight what did you guys like read at the time i liked the percy jackson movie but it also sounds like the for the people who actually read the books it's a lot like the avatar live action movie which we don't speak about i really do want to actually read the books first before watching the series but if i'm going to read it i want to read it in style i decided why not try and put some of my amateur book binding skills to the test so that's why today i'm going to be attempting to take this paperback set and transform it into a hardcover and fancy looking leather bound book set admittedly normally i only do one book project per video and this time it's going to be five so i don't know how this is going to work out but that also means that we better get started on this now obviously to start this we're going to need a paperback set these i bought pre-used so don't worry they've already been loved and used i'm not ruminating a perfectly new set can i just say i really appreciate that the spine and the covers connect to make one big picture seriously kudos to the design team behind these unfortunately for us to reach the end goal they must meet their demise now that the book is to its bare bones we can get started on prepping our text blocks first step to doing that is making the end pages this is what's going to connect our cover of the book to the text block it was pretty simple to do i just had to fold a piece of card stock and then cut it down to the size of the pages then we just dab some glue onto the edge of the front and back pages to attach it and now i just have to do this four more times [Music] after all the end pages are glued on they need to be pressed so that they lay flat maybe one day i'll have an actual book press but today is still not that day for now whatever i can find lying around works too so since the spine was perfectly intact we're done with the text block it already feels a little bit weird to be done with all the text blocks like my last book binding project that was the majority of the project was just making the pages which makes me really excited to do this project because i've never been able to dedicate too much time to the cover it always seems to be more in the text block so let's go ahead and get started on the cover for the cover itself i'm using a mounting board and then mark it to be the same size as the text block with a little bit of overhang on the sides and the top and once i trimmed it down to that size once to make sure it worked i just used that as a template to cut the rest of the boards out and now we have our 10 covers and as fun as that was cutting it by hand i don't want to do that again it's time to bring in technology for the next step so to make the covers look a little bit more fancy i'm going to be adding embossing to it which is essentially just a raised part of the cover for decoration so i used my cricut to cut out all these out of a thinner cardboard because no way was i going to do all this by hand however the card stock i used was a little thin so i end up gluing two of the pieces together to make it the thickness that i wanted should i perhaps have just bought the correct thickness so i could avoid these steps perhaps or maybe i just enjoy the process of book binding and want to increase it as long as possible when gluing the embossing onto the cover i did the very precise measurements of eyeballing it which i'm sure will not come back later in the process to haunt me after several forbidden cardboard toaster strudels later we finally have our covers prepped well at least the front back covers we still need to do the spine using the same cardstock i'm going to mark out the width of the spine and the covers for each individual book because they do vary in size from book to book at least the books don't like double in size like they do in harry potter now for the spines i actually want these pieces to be rounded so a little trick to do that is to score the inside of the piece these score marks will kind of allow it to give it a little bit more room to bend and curve in on itself it still takes a bit of pressure to bend it into that rounded form but now we have a nice and curved spine much like what my doctor said right before i got diagnosed with scoliosis which isn't a joke i actually do have mild scoliosis after taping the pieces together we kind of have a version of our book cover do you think anyone mind if i just stop here like it's it's kind of close enough start playing the montage music and roll the credits yeah no these are barely holding on by a thread so let's add some leather to them so i've used leather on projects before however all those tools and leather were bought from amazon so weren't really the most highest quality so this time around that i ended up going to a local leather shop and it was really great because they were able to recommend what the best leather to use would be at first i was like kind of scared to go into a leather shop because it really did seem like one of those hobbies where they would be like i've been doing leather working for for 50 years and you're coming in here wanting to do your little diy book project no but then they were end up being like super awesome and helped me with everything that i needed i just want to say i love it when people are very accepting and not gatekeepy over a craft sorry i went off about that anyway what i'm doing is i essentially cut the leather to be the size of the cover plus a little bit of overhang and then guess what it's time for more gluing because this entire book is just being held together by elmer's glue which when i say it like that it sounds like i'm doing it improperly but just a lot of book binding is gluing the everything together with pva glue as i'm gluing on the leather to the cover i'm taking my bone folder i'm essentially just pressing down the leather to make sure it sticks especially around that embossing so you can actually see that detail come through it seems like it's going pretty quick in the video but this was actually very time consuming to make sure that everything was pressed down it wasn't going to immediately pop back up after i was done i definitely say it was worth it now we just need to wrap the leather around the edges to do that you need to cut a 45 degree angle around the corners that way you can fold over the different flaps and glue them down to the edges i swear this is going to be the last thing i'm going to say gluing down for like a good bit i put a lot of pressure on where the book hinges are because that's going to affect the opening and closing of the book and with all four sides glued down we have our leather book cover all right so i am so happy with this cover this is priori the most proud i've ever been of a book cover i've made and it's not even done yet it looks like a skin book right now which slightly disturbing i mean i guess it kind of is it's leather and can i just say it just it smells so good why does the leather smell so good was that weird for me to just sniff a book i'm i'm sorry i don't know admittedly it's not perfect sorry i can see an issue of i didn't leave enough space for the hinges between the spine and the cover so it has a little bit trouble opening and closing all the way so i guess the good news is i can fix that when i do the next four books the only problem is i have to do this whole thing four more times yeah it's going to take me a while to do all that again four times however i think this is a fantastic opportunity to tell you about this video's sponsor audible that's right we're actually getting more sponsors on this channel continues to be surprising often on projects like this you run into times where you just gotta do a boring task over and over and over again and what am i supposed to do be alone with my thoughts for several hours [Music] that's why this time i'm going to be trying our sponsor audible now ironically even though audible has thousands of audiobooks to choose from i chose a book that i actually already own which is creativity inc by ed catmull which i've been wanting to read for years now but i've just never had the time to sit down and do it and it felt great to finally be able to listen to this book i mean this is all during time that i had to set aside for this project anyway and now i can say i honestly can't recommend this book enough especially if you're someone in the creative industry like me or if you're just an animation disney fan it has a ton of stories about the founding of pixar and what they do as a company to encourage creativity and with the free trial you can listen to this one or any other title of your choosing you also get access to audible's plus catalog filled with thousands of audiobooks original content and podcasts new members can try audible free for 30 days visit audible.com just less or text just less to 500 500 and when ad read later we finally have our book covers done well i mean i wish it was only 60 seconds but no no this took several hours to do and now it's time to die the leather this nice royal blue yeah sure no one's probably ever made that joke before now i have dyed leather using this dye before however the sponge made it come out very blotchy on the project so to try and avoid that this time martina from nerdforge in her last video used an airbrush to dye her leather while she was rebinding the harry potter book series but jess aren't you just copying her idea with the percy jackson shut up shut up it's totally different what my point is i'm going to be trying an airbrush as well for this i'm going to be going outside so i don't get fumes and dye all over the place i even discovered a little friend who i very creatively named lizzie and with lizzie's supervision it's time to get started okay i say he's gonna it's probably gonna run away as soon as i turn on the air compressors no wouldn't what a brave little guy upon loading up the die i made a very quick realization going to be stained blue by the end of this i can tell i started out by testing out a scrap piece of leather just to make sure that this was possible and it came out with a super even coat and more importantly allowed me to do it super quickly as well i also say it's like 90 degrees out here because it's florida in the middle of june i want to get this done as quick as possible with the now added motivation of avoiding heat stroke i got right to dyeing these covers looking back now i realized i made two big mistakes i underestimated how much fumes there would actually be and for safety even though i was outside i should have been wearing a respirator mask and number two i joked about this earlier but i seriously should have had gloves my hands were blue for like a week am i am i blue dabba dee dabba dai as the kids would say the young hip kid the young hip his 25 year olds okay at this point my roommate came out to help me film so enjoy some of our banter have you ever read homestuck no what it looks like you're painting skin are you trying to dye your hair guy could you imagine having blue hair would be so embarrassing i don't have to film for you you know i would ask you more questions about double life but this is the first video i'm making that has absolutely nothing to do with minecraft but i can't talk about percy jackson because i don't know anything about percy jackson with that being said if you guys do enjoy this video can please let me know by either leaving a like or a comment i know a lot of my viewers are here for my mcyt projects so i'm curious to know what other fan bases and projects you would want to see from me and with that we have all of our book covers dyed this beautiful blue while it may not be perfectly even i think the imperfection honestly adds to the general feel of it lets you know that was done by hand and now we can get started making these actual functional books now to attach the text block it's pretty simple and pretty unsurprising that it's just more gluing leaving a half inch of space away from the spine so that it has room to open all the way i covered the rest in glue making sure to cover it all the way to the edges so it doesn't peel up later and then aligning and pressing down the cover once the glue has kind of set into place i go and use my bone folder to make sure that everything is smooth and there's no air bubbles then the only thing left to do is to flip over the book and do this again to the other cover cue one more short gluing montage once all the books have been glued into their respective covers they needed to press for a little bit however if you recall i don't have a book press so the cricket is so useful as well as a paperweight i may have strange methods but these books are pressed now it's time to add the final details so we can actually tell these books apart by adding the titles that i have to design first you know i realize it's kind of hard to design a book cover for a book you haven't read and that you don't want spoiled so you can't look anything up so i just kept it pretty minimal so i did find these book sleeves designed by juniper brooks and had little icons for each of the books so i'm essentially just going to be copying and making my own versions of that which as a graphic designer i know is very friend upon but these are my own personal books so go ahead and do it obviously if i was selling these it would be a problem but these are just for me i'm going to be creating these designs of a silver iron on foil which i think will look super cool against the navy dye i'm actually using the cricut this time for its purpose intention not just a paper weight and now i can peel back the excess and should be left with just my design ooh look how shiny and pretty it is unfortunately with this material if the detail gets too small it will just get taken up with the excess now it might seem like with the cricut that it just does all the work for you but when it comes to actually peeling the design it took me literal hours to do this like this footage is sped up a thousand percent the reason it takes so long is because you don't want the actual design moving out of place and the smaller elements don't have as good as a grip so it's easy for it to want to come up with the rest of it it's a very painstaking process but it can also be very satisfying to see the final result after several hours of weeding foil later we can finally start adding it to the covers to attach the foil you need to go over it with an iron and then once the adhesive is heated up you can peel away the plastic while vinyl is not the most traditional way of foiling a book i think the results look fantastic however when it works i started to have a ton of issues especially with the covers where part of it would melt but then part of it would still peel up with it so then i would go over again but then some would melt the plastic instead because i added too much heat resulting in percy jackson the last olympian which i had to go and recut later eventually i did get a better idea of how long to have it heat and to make sure to constantly be going back and reheating it when it looked like it was peeling up it was quite the struggle but i definitely say that the final foil results were worth it one last step is just to add a layer of leather sealant that way to protect the leather dye as well as the foil from peeling in the future from use and with that our final book set is complete [Music] the best part about this project is now i actually get to read the books a lot of times i do book binding for decorations so i'm glad i actually get to read these ones i hope you guys enjoyed the video and i'll see y'all in the next one wait a second how did i not notice that i added a t at the end how do i even do that

Channel: Jess Less

Views: 189,618

Keywords: Percy jackson books, percy jackson, percy jackson disney plus, percy jackson series, heroes of olympus audiobook, Paperback to, paperback to hardcover, paperback to leather bound, book binding, book binding diy, bookbinding tutorial, leather bound books, book binding hardcover, rick riordan, paperback to hardcover book binding, paperback to hardcover diy, the lightning thief, how to make a hardcover book, how to make a hard covered book, how to make a hard cover book at home

Id: C8AQbPZ4eOc

Length: 16min 41sec (1001 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 28 2022