Besides articles and videos, iBookBinding makes small tools for book artists. They run in your browser, with nothing to install.
Marbler’s Workstation
A marbling tray in your browser: float colours, comb them, and watch the traditional patterns form for the same reasons they form on water.
Drop colours onto a virtual size bath, watch each one spread and make room for the others, then draw a stylus or a comb through them. The ink behaves as a liquid, never as pixels, so colours stay crisp and the traditional patterns (Stone, Gelgit, Nonpareil, Chevron, Peacock) form for the same reasons they form on water. There are set-ups for Western marbling, Turkish ebru and Japanese suminagashi. It is a tray to play and learn on, not a stand-in for a real one: free in your browser on a phone, tablet or computer, for bookbinders, marblers and the curious.
- Three set-ups: Western marbling on carrageenan size, Turkish ebru and Japanese suminagashi, with real tray and comb sizes in millimetres or inches.
- Drops, a brush for showers of droplets, a stylus, and combs you set up yourself (how many teeth, their spacing, teeth left out, a second row).
- Six traditional patterns to watch form, and “Comb my ink” to run a classic combing sequence over your own drops.
- Save a bath and it replays exactly, stroke by stroke. Replay any bath move by move, and share a picture or a short video clip.
- True-size print files: a 300 or 600 dpi PNG and a vector PDF with CMYK (Workshop feature ยท Free during beta. A one-time purchase will be needed after launch.)
Works offline. No accounts, no advertising and no tracking.
Ideas and bug reports: in the app, tap the title to open About, then “Feedback and ideas on Discord”, or go straight to #marbler on our Discord. A saved bath replays exactly, so attaching one shows us precisely what you saw.
Coming later
- Endband Loom: choose the silk colours and threads, and watch a sewn endband take shape.
- Folio!: fold a real printed sheet from 1493 into a little book.
We’ll add them here when they’re ready.