How To Make Your Own Tobin’s Spirit GuideBy: West Coast Ghostbusters CEO Bryan Fear Background Initially, I envisioned that if Tobin’s actually existed it would have an old and classic appearance. I’m thinking some kind of leather-bound, hardcover book with gold foil lettering and pages with a rough texture that haven’t been seen in a century. There’s a couple of different ways to go about this. The first is one I knew would be expensive, but I had to look. You can go to online publishers but they all want about $800 or more to publish no less than 20 copies of whatever you want turned into a book. I couldn’t find anyone who would make me just one hardcover book with a contents of my choosing. The second way I found was to find an old book (encyclopedias at a thrift store) and tear the pages out. Print out your own pages of Tobin’s and bind them with glue and linen. Glue those into the hardcover and alter the lettering and there you are, a genuine copy of Tobin’s. I looked at a lot of used book stores and the sorts, but I just couldn’t imagine how I’d alter the lettering on the cover. The third way is the one I’ll outline here. You can make your own copy of Tobin’s by using supplies from a scrapbooking store and from Ghostbusters International®. Ingredients:
ø Book: I recommend a scrapbooking “Memory Book” ($12 USD, book & 10 pages) ø Pages: I used additional sheets for the Memory Book ($4 USD each x 5 sets) ø Lettering: Gold foil letters were my choice ($3 USD or so, cost varies) Click on the pictures for full size images. The book that caught my eye the most was this one. It comes in Blue, Red, Green and White. All of them have a gold foil border.
I chose red. Here’s what it looks like raw, and the gold foil stickers I got. The binding is odd though. The spine is guaranteed to be thicker than the end so it won’t have a very book-like appearance. It’s thinner than, say, a three-ring binder but it’s still not very book-like. Looking at the end of it, you can see it has a three-tier appearance.
Fortunately, on the inside of the book there’s some extra material. This is meant for expanding the center of those three sections of the spine, but I’ve got a better idea. I’ll cut it out and use it as a binding to go over the exterior of it.
Letters measured and applied.
Pages printed out and inserted. Title page, forward by Ray Stantz, introduction by J.H. Tobin himself, contents to include page about Gozer, etc.
Strip of that expansion material is cut to size, pre-measured and folded, and gold-foil lettering applied. Here’s a pic of it before.
And after. I used 3M spray-on adhesive to coat the back of the material and then applied it very carefully to the spine, pressing it firmly into place. In my case I propped the book up to rest on it’s spine and just put blocks on both sides of it to hold it that way until dry.
End result isn’t the perfection I’d hoped for, but for a pretty good looking facsimile. I’ll let you know if I ever find out a way to make a true, honest-to-God leatherbound, hardcover copy of Tobin’s using the contents found at GBI as the guts of it.
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