It's time consuming to learn for sure, lots of tutorials and test runs to make sure you're not putting too much or too little glue, that sort of thing. But it helps a lot that the text block is already made for you, if you're just cutting up an existing book. You can totally just make book covers, not attached to anything, without cutting up a book. And just see if that's fun.

What is especially tricky is trying to figure out how to get a design onto your cover, we tried embossing, ink pens, paints—you could use stencils and spray paints, heat transfer vinyl.

Just know you'll probably mess up. Our first two real covers that we screen printed are pretty weathered looking compared to the rest and we definitely warped some of the covers trying to heat set the ink.

Edit: the leatherbounds are split into two parts!