Wooden Book Cover

So recently my friend has gotten me a notebook with a cover that wasn't as appealing to me. Instead of being a jerk and getting a new book, I decided to create a new book cover for the book. After thinking about various book covers, I decided that the best course of action would be to make a book cover out of wood.

Materials needed:
- 1/8 inch sheet plywood
- old notebook (could buy new, but who wants to spend money?)
- glue (preferably craft glue)
- laser cutter
-computer (for the design and cutting)
-heat gun

First i gutted pages from the book cover. Then I hopped onto libre office draw (one of the many laser cutting softwares I'm comfortable with) and I drew living hinges.

Living hinges are little slits in wood or cardboard that allow it to bend without the use of adding actual hinges. I created different test hinges to see which best fit the book pages.

After I found the best hinge (not shown), I stacked them to the hight of the original book cover and added rectangles for the front and back of the cover. With the file made, I sent them to the laser cutter to cut.

After the cover was cut, I noticed that it naturally stayed in an open position. To get it to close naturally, I soaked the hinge in water for three minutes. Because I didn't want to bend the front and back cover as well, I applied wet towels over the hinge itself. Once three minutes passed, I bent the book to where it stayed closed and applied heat to it via heat gun so that it stayed in that position

Now all thats left is to glue the cover to the book. Being that this was the first ever book cover I made, I didn't know the best way to glue it. I do plan to learn a better method and put it on an updated instructable.