I recently picked up a falling-apart journally/scrapbooky thing at a supply swap. My original thinking was to scavenge it for parts, but someone had clearly handmade it, and in the end I decided it deserved at least an attempt at a rehab.
Here are some of the before pictures. The outer spine was torn, and the accordion pages were coming detached from the cover.
I cut everything apart, covered and reattached the spine, and added some trim. I split the accordion setup into individual signatures (two pages/four fronts and backs) and bound them directly to the spine. All of the interior page decoration is the original maker’s work.
This is so fun! I used to work in the bindery/conservation department of a music library (best job ever!) and most of what we did was remove staples and sew signatures, etc. but we also did quite a bit of restoration work, and I think it’s always so neat when people decide to restore old books and paper items!
