cookbook project drama

over the past week, i've been working on the cookbook project. and i made a ton of progress. i was all excited.

i decorated the spine:

i bound the covers together:

i started binding the inside of the book:

then saw a huge, massive, awful error. pretty much all hardback books have covers that are 1/8" larger than the book pages inside. this allowance protects the pages and makes it look nice. well, my book did not have that 1/8" on the outer edge. FAIL. it didn't occur to me that i needed to check this measurement because i was reusing the covers of the original book. i just assumed they would fit. but since i decided on a new & different binding, they don't fit. and that miscalculation makes it look bad.

bfff & i talked about some solutions - trimming the pages of the book (too risky), adding additional bookboard to the covers somehow (would look like a bandaid), or...remaking the covers. dammit. i went with the last option. because if i didn't, i wouldn't be happy with the project as a whole. and it would bug the hell out of me.

remaking the covers isn't as bad as it sounds. i will have to completely rebind the book though. mostly, i'm disappointed that i can't use the original covers. i liked the juxtaposition of the old worn covers with the new binding & spine. *sigh*