#binderary 2023

[sayornispress]

Two author copies delivered! Both for @bropunzeling (AO3 here).

More photos and info under the cut!

I actually did my copies of these a while ago--both in February, one in 2024 and the other in 2023. collide the spaces that divide us was one of my earliest attempts at social media formatting, and one of the last books I ever made with my inkjet printer. I did end up fixing a few things on that one's typeset, but it's nearly identical to my first copy. You may also notice in the photos that I chopped off a bit too much off the edge--I didn't yet know how to use my guillotine, and in all the time that's passed since then, it's become defunct (sharp enough to cut off a hand, but not sharp enough to cut through a stack of paper lol)

It's neat to see such a clear example of how much I've improved as a bookbinder in a year and a half--my copy on the left, author's on the right:

Also, a comparison of color ink (left) vs color laser (right):

Like this, it's easy to see how much more vibrant color toner is than ink. Ink works much better for complex images, but since I don't print a lot of photos, but do make a lot of social media typesets, this works much much better for my purposes.

Soon after that, I bought a black-only laser printer and had a whole new set of challenges. It was in this era of printing that I made only fools rush in. It has one of my most complex title pages to date, as they're not really my forte.

Below are my copy, the title page, and an example of how I did texts in this particular typeset.

My copy has a cloth spine and a different cloth as the cover, with a strip from the endpapers to hide my sins act as a bridge between them. This is one of the binds from last Binderary that I'm most proud of.

The title page is in several different pieces--sort of jigsaw-puzzled together from vectors, Google Drawings, and a few different fonts.

Black-toner-only printing meant adjusting how I did social media formatting, and this is one of my favorite ways I solved that problem. I like the simple, almost minimalist formatting that sets the texts apart but doesn't steal the show.

I'd been meaning to offer author copies for these books for as long as I'd had them, but it's hard to understate how little I wanted to use my inkjet once I got a laser XD It's both slower and more expensive to use an inkjet, so as soon as I got my color laser printer set up, I sent the DM!

I organize my handbound fics by ship--that is, every ship has a set spine cloth and title color--so one of my favorite things about author copies is that I get to be a little more creative about covers!

[gargoyleandgremlinpress]

Five Dogs, One Cat by Ryfkah

"If you’ve ever believed me in anything, believe I want what’s best for Jin Ling," the first line of the letter reads. Jiang Cheng has to stop and take a moment before he continues on to the next line: "You must come to Carp Tower as soon as you can and lavish praise on the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen."

I love this fic! It's a funny, touching, post-canon MDZS story about Jin Ling's relationship with Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian, and comes with an inevitable side of Yunmeng bros reconciliation.

This was another Binderary project, and a belated Christmas present. I made one copy for me, and one for the friend who introduced me to both this fic, and The Untamed. The cover is printed on a piece of cotton sheet (temporarily backed with freezer paper) with a home laser printer. The endpapers are Nepalese Lokta paper. The spine is acrylic paint using Cricut stencil vinyl. At under 14k, this fic made a cute little half-sized quarto book, just under a hundred pages.

I did my best to match up the different dogs in each chapter using public domain images. There are a few errors in the chapter opening typesetting I only caught AFTER everything was all glued (of course).

This is probably the lower limit for what I'd want to sew endbands on. The spine was skinny enough that it was decidedly fiddly.

I am a sucker for a classic 5+1 format, and I just love the ending for this one!

[simply-sithel]

Gifts by @chubsonthemoon [link]

An adorable story that made me happy to read- never mind that I'm unfamiliar with the fandom, the sentiment was universal. Twas very sweet and an exceptionally well suited gem to set within the form of a crafted & gifted item.

The color guidance on this one was tropical island, a very verdant green. Always oh so pleasing to find that perfect little patch of print to fussy cut. Origami paper is excellent for the minis, being so thin and all. An extra small mini- with 2,153 words, it only came out to 39 pages (that 28lb paper really helps bulk out the wee ones)

[somedayourocean]

a smol cat journal, because bitches love cats (im bitches)

[nocturnus33]

The beautiful journey of a first binding ❤

i have made… a book! for the first time! renegade publishing’s binderary inspired me to actually give it a try instead of just thinking a lot about it.

i did go out and buy some tools for this, but i was trying to do as much as i could with materials i already had. (i’ve already been slowly working at learning how to use scribus for typesetting bc i have some work experience with indesign typesetting but there’s no goddamn way i will pay adobe for that. i could have done a nicer layout and job of typesetting, i’m a little bothered by some of the things i left in, but i was trying to get it done rather than be perfectionist.) so, printed all this on my very small and weak deskjet printer on regular printer paper, covers are covered in cool paper i bought but the substance of them is some cardboard i cut out of a box i had, thread is some embroidery floss i had that i waxed (? not. well. or maybe well? idk more practice needed). and that’s also why i decided to do a coptic stitch binding, because it seemed simple for my first try and because it didn’t require me to buy a whole bunch of stuff for the binding. i definitely messed up some of the stitching, especially on the covers and there’s some reeeeeal loose stitches when you look at the long running ones inside the signatures, but it all seems to work :D

the fic is a collection of some of my batfam genfics! my longest solo authored fic is 16k and i didn’t particularly want to bind it for a multitude of reasons, so i landed on making a collection instead, and it was kind of fun tbh. i got to decide which ones to use and put them into an order i liked and i thought made sense. ended up with 10 fics and 96 pages (in case anyone is curious: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

[epitomereally]

Vis-à-Vis-à-Vis by @vukovich

Harry's assignment was simple. Close out Draco Malfoy's missing persons case so he can be declared dead.

But who's making withdrawals from Malfoy's vaults? How is a death omen-turned-Unspeakable involved? Is an organization known as the Moirai to blame?

Harry brushes it off until he can't. Until The Prophet is flooded with sightings of dead people. Until Robards throws himself on his sword. Until Ron turns on his own family. Until Harry scarcely trusts his own reflection in the mirror and trusts the stranger in his bed even less.

Until all that stands between war and peace is Harry, a name plate, a stadium of murderers, and Draco Malfoy.

God save the Ministry.

Vis-a-Vis-a-Vis was one of the most inventive, thrilling, nasty (in the best way), and intriguing fics I read last year and I’m so happy I got to bind a copy for Vuk & myself. I bound this as a part of Renegade’s Binderary 2023 (where we challenge ourselves to make as many books as we can). I specifically focused on some of my favorite fics published in 2022 that I hadn’t already bound :)

Inspired by @lettersbyelise's ask, I’m going to interleave the inspiration & the process in this post! I knew when I was reading Vis-à-Vis-à-Vis that I wanted something graphic and bold and a little bit sinister. My hand-painting skills are not good enough for the super sharp edges I wanted, so I used heat-transfer vinyl for the first time (tysm Rhi, my guru & owner of a cricut). I also couldn’t find a commercial bookcloth that was a bold, bright red, so I made my own from fabric.

I also HAD to have something that only was exposed under camera, which is a central leitmotif (motif? theme? Idk it’s been so long since I took a lit class) of the fic — whatever it is, Harry is always trying to get a photo of the Doppelgänger to expose their identity. There are only two (2) flash-sensitive inks on the internet & I bought the cheaper one. It’s absolutely not perfect - you can see the image of Draco when you tilt the page because, really, the ink is just a reflective white (as Vuk called it, a shiny paint lol) — but I am absolutely delighted with the effect. Also happy to chat via ask or dms about the experimenting I did with the ink if you’re a fellow binder wanting to use it! I also would use a stencil next time to paint, as it turns out painting with basically invisible ink is really hard lmao.

I then really beat this things hidden/unseen theme to death, as I am wont to do. The title page is meant to simulate a flash/spotlight & so only parts of it are illuminated. The chapter headers are a reverse flash in black, while the chapter numbers are hidden/revealed by it (are they hard to read? Yes, absolutely. Am I happy with them anyways? Absolutely, yes). Even my bindery logo is a paparazzi camera for this bind :) the endpapers are spooky eyes WATCHING YOU READ (also kinda leant itself to the Illuminati/hidden conspiracy vibe), as are the scene dividers.

Headbands are just a fun hot pink and candy apple red, because I love that combo, and it’s certainly a bold statement. This is probably the bind I stretched myself most creatively on, as I think my style is naturally softer and more romantic, but I am so pleased with how it came out.

Materials:

Body font: Liberation Serif

Title font: Timonium

Endpapers: Lokta eyes

Bookcloth: handmade from red fabric

Flare brush for chapter headers: Xresch on DeviantArt

Flash-sensitive ink: MaxMax Flash-Sensitive Ink

[celestial-sphere-press]

Book Decoration: AKA All The Ways I Don't Use a Cricut

(this post is for people who don't want to buy an expensive cutting tool, or for those that do have an expensive cutting tool that would like to mix things up a little)

1. Print That Shit

If you're already printing your own textblocks, an easy step for titles is to print them. Above is a title printed onto an "obi" of decorative paper. I measured out where I wanted things on the finished book and laid it out in Affinity, then printed it on a full sheet & trimmed it down to wrap around the book. A more simple method is to print & glue on the label into a slight indent in the cover (to protect it). A third option is to do the spine in bookcloth, while you print on paper for the cover and then glue that paper onto the boards (this usually looks even better when it is a three-piece bradel bind).

2. Foil Quill / Heat Pens

The heat pen is one of my go-to tools, but it can be a bit touchy about materials. The most popular version is the We R Memory Keepers' Foil Quill (which is one of the most ergonomic), but other pens exist that can get you to a higher heat temp, finer lines, or more consistent foil. For example, I have a pen created by a local Japanese bookbinding studio that fares way better on leathers than the WRMK quill & with a finer tip, but it's hell to control. Best results in general are on paper or smooth bookcloth (starched linen, arrestox, colibri - even duo will work but its less solid). The fuzzier a bookcloth is, the less your foil quill wants to deal with it. This means the heat n bond method of making bookcloth does not play nice with a heat pen usually, but there are two solutions: 1) use this tutorial on paste + acrylic medium coated bookcloth instead that will get you a perfect surface for the heat pen, or 2) use the pen on paper & then glue onto the cloth. I did a video tutorial for both foil quill use and this type of homemade bookcloth for @renegadeguild Binderary in 2023.

You get the most consistent results by tracing through a printed template that is taped in place, as I do in the video above.

3. Paint That Shit

Acrylic paints will do you fine! The above is free-handed with a circle template, because I wanted that vibe. If you need straight lines that won't seep, lay them down with tape first & then paint over it first with a clear Acrylic medium, then your color. Same goes for stencils. Two more examples of painted bookcloth:

4. IT'S GOT LAYERS

By using layers of thinner boards, you can create interesting depths & contrasts on your cover. You can also make cutouts that peep through to the decorative paper behind. The most important part to this technique is the order in which each edge is wrapped. To get a good wrapped inside edge, you will split the turn in into tabs to get them to conform to a curve. You can also layer multiple colors of bookcloth without multiple layers of board, as seen below left, so long as you mind your cut edges for fraying.

5. Inlaid... anything

Mirrors! Marbled paper! I saw someone do a pretty metal bookmark once! The key is creating a little home for it to live in, which is pretty similar to the above layering method. On one layer you cut the shape, & glue that layer onto the bottom solid board before covering. You can do the top layer as an entire 1 mm board (like I did for the mirrors) or a sheet of cardstock, like I would use for inlaid paper.

6. Decorative Paper

Decorative paper is always helpful & adds to the paper hoard... & its effects can be layers with other techniques, as below. Marbles, chiyogami, momi, or prints & maps of all kinds can be great additions. Some papers may need a protective coating (such as wax or a sealer).

7. Stamps (with optional linocut)

While I've not used many more regular rubber stamps, I do know some who have, successfully! And I've used one once or twice with embossing powder (see photo 3 up, the gold anchor on the little pamphlet bind). What also works is to carve your own linocut or stamp, & then use block printing ink to ink it onto your fabric (as i did above). A bit time intensive, but it was nice how easily reproducible it was, and I liked the effect I got for this particular bind.

These methods are not exhaustive, just ones I've used, and there are of course many others. I haven't gone too into detail on any of these for the sake of length (& post photo limits) but feel free to ask about more specifics. Usually I'm using them in combination with other options.

[chubsonthemoon]

HELLO JAYVIK (fanbinding) NATION. I had four binderary projects planned this year. I finished one of them. This is not one of them. WHAT HAPPENED WAS I had binderary plans and then I watched the bear trap of a show that is Arcane. What happened was I tripped and fell straight into jayvik hell. Here I am now, a month later. Anyway!

This is the fantastic Talis, V. Talis, J. "Social Behaviors of Lokfar Peninsula’s Wild Mammals (Specifically Those of my Co-Author)" by @zillac! I had SO much fun reading and binding this--zillac's writing is some of my favorite ever, that perfect mix of hilarious and heartfelt, with spot-on voicing for everyone. This is a Tarzan AU and SUCH a delight--Jayce never gets rescued as a kid and instead gets raised by wolves (SEXY WOLFMAN JAYCE YEEHAW), and Viktor meets him years later on a research trip. The title is a fun spin on an academic paper, so in keeping with that theme, I went for a more simple/classical design and a stiffened board binding construction, which was new to me and SO much fun. I will definitely be using this construction again!

Some design fun facts! Blue and silver details are to match the icy climate of Lokfar (there's a line where Viktor is like "why are your [very strong, distracting, huge] arms bare when it's fucking freezing out?" and Jayce is like "Hm? Oh it's summer," which, CHILLS, no pun intended). Cover papers were hand-marbled by me at Renegade Retreat 2023 (I'm so happy I found the perfect fic to use them!). The endpapers are a bit translucent, which reminded me so much of the frozen glacier in the fic I just had to use them:

I also went for a different font for the interior--I've been using Garamond basically ever since I started fanbinding (which AH, it's my five-year anniversary this year! I should write a roundup post...), but I decided to try Alegreya this time around, and I really love how it changes the feel of the typeset.

Bonus ASMR flip-through! (I bought a ring light/phone camera stand, so now I can use both hands in my book photos lolol)

And that's all for today!! Thanks so much for sharing your work, Zil!! <333

[tinwhiskerpress]

Binderary 2025

Every year Binderary is a February event hosted by the Renegade Bindery Discord, with participants sharing expertise in presentations and challenging themselves. My goal this year was 9 books, which is fewer than I've done in previous years but more complex and definitely larger. I completed my nine, plus one more that was almost finished in February but not quite.

2 volumes of Viridian (largest and most successful rounded books I've made to date)

2 copies of The Beast With the Beautiful Face (fulfillment of a fandom challenge from 2023)

The Pines (gift for a family member)

The Aerial Corps (by me)

Impossible Things (by me)

Flight (by me, one of my typeset gifts from the exchange this year)

Hired Help (by me)

[bluejayblueskies]

Bookbinding Year in Review

I bound a lot of books this year, so I thought I'd do a quick little recap of my progress as a binder! Starting off with some stats for 2023:

Total books bound: 68 Total words bound: 1,428,472 Average words per book: 21,007 Total books gifted: 44

I bound a lot of short fics this year, most notably as part of Binderary, a bookbinding marathon event hosted by the Renegade Publishing server in February. I aimed to bind a book a day, specifically binding shorter fics in the pamphlet style--a single signature sewn to a cardstock cover. I hit that and beyond, binding a total of 36 books for the event! I plan to do Binderary again this year, though my project for it is a surprise ✨

(The observant will notice that there are fewer than 36 books in this picture--I finished up a few more after this photo was taken!)

Other events I bound for this year included:

For a total of 54 books bound for an event! That's ~80% of the total amount of books I bound this year!

My top fandom was unsurprisingly Malevolent, coming in at 53 fics. The Magnus Archives was a close runner-up at 8 fics. The other seven fics bound were in the 9-1-1 and Hello From the Hallowoods fandoms, as well as some journals.

I'm really happy with my progress as a binder this year! I participated in a lot of events, gifted many books, got some fun new equipment, rebound my first ever bound book, and generally grew a lot as an artist. My favorite books from this year have to be this set of two volumes I did for @phynoma's work the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of the world for the Rusty Quill Big Bang:

The embroidery was very much a labor of love, and I'm so happy with how they turned out!!

I also loved collaborating with visual artists in various ways, including working with @kahtiihma to commission artwork from @shadow0haven for her fic Repetition//Retention and incorporating over a hundred pieces of artwork from @captaincravatthecapricious and @genderfluid-druid in my bind of @organchordsandlightning's fic formaldehyde.

I plan to do some more collaboration with artists in 2024, as well as many more gifts and author copies, so stay tuned for that!!

Some other statistics below the cut, for those interested:

Books bound per binding style

Books bound per size

Top 10 Authors Bound, sorted by number of books (duplicate copies included)

With_the_Wolves (12 books)

Croik (8 books)

SupposedToBeWriting (8 books)

Kahti (7 books)

PrettyArbitrary (5 books)

shadow0haven (5 books)

AlexanderPeterson (4 books)

AnonymousSong (3 books)

arthureameslove (3 books)

bluejayblueskies (that's me!) (3 books)

[robins-egg-bindery]

Woah, did 2023 fly by, or was it just me?! 10 unique projects, 8 different fandoms, 56 books later, here we are!

Cheers to all the new techniques I got to experiment with this year: foiling, edge marbling, dust jackets, painted covers, cut outs, HTV, infusible ink, sewing my own endbands, pushing my design limits in Word, and making my own cassette mixtape!

Another incredible thing that happened in 2023 was the @renegadepublishing Retreat! As one of the organizers and an attendee, I had such a blast meeting with other binders and sharing such a special event! We also had 14 local meetups that I was able to attend, and I was able to participate in Binderary, FFWAD, & the Bound Exchange ❤️ Here’s to even more fun in 2024 🎉

[ohmightydevviepuu]

fanbinding: break me

the story: break me by @thisonesatellite, published adjacent to the 2019 Captain Swan Supernatural Summer. warning: here there be monsters! originally found in a rec post by @wistfulcynic, this fic changed everything about how i approached fandom and the people in it.

i read it in a single sitting.

binding: sewn boards designed to match we kill the flame, originally bound for binderary 2023. black homemade bookcloth covers with painted title under the obi band. art by @mariakov81. (the cat hair adds to the je ne sais quois.)

[gargoyleandgremlinpress]

Sudden Nature by everbrighter

This MDZS fic/series is a modern AU that's mostly without magic... except there's a heavenly bureaucracy. And every once in a while, it makes a mistake, and sends someone who's died back to earth. This is rare, but frequent enough that hospitals have resurrection wards just in case.

If you're at all familiar with canon, I think we can all see where this is going.

Wei Ying is a a whistleblower on the Wen Corporation in this one, who's adopted baby A-Yuan. When he's killed in an accident, Lan Zhan raises Lan Yuan and lives with his grief... and then Wei Ying comes back. This is a story that's emotional and heartfelt, and very funny in bits, about grief and loss and family, and getting something back you never thought you would, much like canon.

The series is a bunch of interconnected short fic with two long segments. The first one is from one from Lan Sizhui's point of view: "Lan Yuan has lived most of his sixteen years not knowing the man who raised him as a toddler. So when Wei Ying suddenly comes back to life, both Lan Yuan and his dad, Lan Zhan, work to make room in their lives for him. Too bad he has a science project due this week..."

The second one is from Wei Ying's: "Wei Ying comes back from the dead, all of a sudden. Over the course of a week, he remembers what it is to be alive, and what it is to be in love." (Not gonna lie, I kind of love the parts where Wei Ying is adjusting to no longer having the body of a twenty year old, in terms of sleeping for a week on the couch now has CONSEQUENCES.)

But it was the very first part of the series that hooked me, where Lan Zhan falls in love. And it's not who you think.

"Aren’t there classes for this? Aren’t there books a person is supposed to read for this? Should he have done research? Shouldn’t he have prepared? But ah, it’s too late now, and there’s a baby in his arms, face to the shoulder of Lan Zhan’s cable-knit sweater."

I finished the typeset for this fic back in the fall of 2022, and it was in my pile of text blocks to finish binding for Binderary, an annual fanbinding challenge, in February, 2023. It was the last one left. I looked at the text block. I looked at my bookcloth and paper options for the cover. I pulled out two options... and couldn't decide. It turns out, I just didn't have the right combination of colours.

In the interim, I obtained some Duo book cloth, a particular line that has a two-tone colour shift to it, gorgeous in person, but really hard to photograph. The company that makes it, sadly, has gone out of business, and the final group orders for it obtained near epic status among @renegadeguild circles. (It has its own lore. And fic.)

Which is to say, the spine of this book is Duo Dragonfly, and the cover is chiyogami paper. The endbands were my first time trying a double core, in sewing thread, and are a little bit shaky as a result, though I'm pretty happy with the colour combo. Lettering stencilled in gold acrylic paint.

I was going for an ethereal, heavenly feel with the title page, and a shout out to the Toronto setting with the spread on the table of contents. (Hello, fellow Canadians!)

A few interior shots here, and a vaguely Lan cloud used for the section breaks. I did a bit of formatting to mimic a newspaper column for the article that starts off "Thirty-Seven," the long section from Wei Ying's point of view.

I am pretty happy with how it turned out, and glad I held off to get the match that felt right for the cover materials!

And behind the cut for spoilers... the last sentence in the short chapter right before Wei Ying's death gets me RIGHT IN THE FEELS every single time I read it.

Lan Zhan held onto A-Yuan! He held him for fifteen minutes, and then for the next sixteen years it took for Wei Ying to come back from getting milk at the 7-11! Oh my heart. Nnngh.

(Also, I slid in a fan art illustration for the fic from GreenTeaPikachu, so enjoy the drunk!LanZhan Does Parkour as an added bonus for clicking through!)

[simply-sithel]

The Bar at the End of the Fandom by firstlightofeos [link]

A binderary request from @daemonluna I was thrilled to bind! Not only did it turn out quite nice (that's a scrap of @epitomereally's dyed bookcloth there on the spine, cover paper from @aetherseer and end paper from... @spiderverbiclespress?) but the story was new to me and highly amusing. Haven't bound a copy for myself yet but do mean to!

[geminibookbinding]

Binderary Week 2

Been holding onto this one for a while, but I'm excited to share it now 😍

Had the absolute pleasure of binding @littlesponge-fics Dead Salvation, a Bakugou x Reader, Dead Space AU! From the cover to the interior, I kept the color scheme red/white/black. The title set up on the cover came to me in the middle of the night, and I used heat reactive foil to give it an extra shine. Ended up making two copies, one for a friend and an author copy. Overall, very pleased with how it turned out!

(Completed: 2/11/2023)

[overlyenthusiasticfictionreader]

Binderary 2024

Binderary is once again almost upon us! For the folks at Renegade Bindery, February is a month where we focus on making books, similar to NaNoWriMo for writers and Inktober for artists.

This is my accountability post for Binderary 2024! Below are my preparations, my goals, and new techniques I’m going to try. Check it out under the cut:

My Preparations: - 7 finished typesets, quarto-letter sized. I’m also hoping to get these printed out and folded before February 1. - Lots of research on pamphlet binding! - A little bit of research on box making/cartonnage!

My Goals: - I want to bind each of these typesets in a different style of pamphlet binding. - The 7 typesets are documentation of my conversations with authors I’ve worked with over the past year. I want to archive these before the get lost in the morass of online stuff, because glancing at an author reaction to a book I’ve make is a great pick-me-up! Archiving includes making sure my posts and the author’s stories are in the Wayback Machine at Archive.org. - Someone suggested I made a box to keep these guys in, and I have not tried any box making yet. These should all end up roughly the same height and width, so they should all fit in one box! So one (1) box by the end of Binderary. - If I survive all of that, I have a typeset I received from the Renegade Typeset Exchange 2023 that I should get started on! We’ll consider this a stretch goal.

New Techniques: - I have several pamphlet binding techniques I want to try: 2 section pamphlet with cover, one sewing; stab binding (tortoise shell) with a Z-fold cover; button hole stich; concertina binding; stich pattern on the spine (which I believe is a variation on long stitch); conservation pamphlet for 2 sections and 3 sections. These are from both the Kevin A Smith books on glueless binding and also a couple of DAS videos. - I have not tried cartonnage at all! I do have a fairly simple process laid out in the book by the Hollanders (yes those Hollanders) “Introduction to Bookbinding and Custom Cases”. - If I make it that far, for my exchange typeset I want to try a cover with a cutout!

I will update at the end of February to let you know how it goes!