#bookbinding commission

[alki-studio]

Binding: The Wolf Queen, from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

This binding is a compilation of all 8 volumes of The Wolf Queen from Skyrim. Please consider reading my making-of process here!

Thank you for the commission!

Process: Part 1 | Part 2 | Final Results

[exhausted-eternally]

Just a little reminder that I bind books if you're looking for a more unique gift for the artist or writer in your life. C:

Feel free to check out my shop to see what I have available, or take a look at my commissions if you're looking for something custom made! (Stuck on ideas? Have a peep at my portfolio.)

[sanktalinn]

The starless sea

Bound by hand

[glassbottlepress]

All of these (and more!) are now available for worldwide purchase on my Ko-fi shop! I've added all player & DM, lined, and blank notebooks that did not get sold at Rogue Comic Con in May, as well as updated my commission prices, options, and number of slots. In addition, for those interested in poetry, my two chapbooks are also available for purchase through ko-fi.

If you have any questions or like what you see but want it in a different format, please message me here, on Ko-fi, or email me at glassbottlepress@gmail.com. Chances are, I have extra materials and can make something just like what you see!

[stardryad]

Art commissioned by @lordoftherazzles for her fic Bookbinder//Songwriter on AO3: in which they got into a uh complication (aka the beloved meme got redrawn again ❤️)

[esseastri]

Bookbinding Commissions!

Hello fronds!

I'm a little short of income (and job hunting is slowly killing me), so I'm opening up Bookbinding Commissions!

If you are interested in commissioning me for a custom-designed, hand-made, hand-lettered, hand-drawn book cover, hooray!! and thank you! You can do so by emailing me at casebycasecovers@gmail.com!

You can find examples of my work here! (This includes the somewhat famous This Is How You Lose the Time War red-and-blue cover.)

Commission options include:

Custom Cover: $100usd. Hand-crafted hardcover case for your favorite paperback book! Can also be applied to blank journals for an extra $25.

Comics Bind-Up: $200usd. Combine your single-issue comic books into one or more volumes with a hand-crafted hardcover case. Can also be applied to printed-out fanfiction, with the fanfic author's permission!

Full Series Matched Set: $150 +25usd per book. Matching hand-crafted hardcovers for your favorite paperback series!

All payments will be in US dollars and made through Paypal.

If you want to give your favorite book the fancy new dress it deserves, please email me! I want to work with you to make a beautiful object!!

[cerealboxlore]

I bought a commission recently

And

I love it!

I wanted to see art of Billy and Captain Marvel hanging out together bc I really liked the concept of them being separate entities/people by @wolfsbanesparks so I commissioned an artist to draw it~ it's my wallpaper now

Artist is @/kkmy31 on twitter (bc careful, it's twitter, and this person also draws a lot of nsfw stuff)

[missmungoe]

If you have a moment, you should go check out TricksterMelon on Twitter :) I hope you like it <3

I am speechless

[badhairred]

Rebind Prisoner of Azkaban✨️

I had so much fun making this, and it came out exactly how I wanted.

[mythrilthread]

This is a very sweet photo book that was commissioned as an anniversary gift.

The design is very simple and clean-cut, and I had a lot of fun putting it all together.

I think this was the first book I managed successfully trim by hand at home, and sanded the edges smooth.

[alki-studio]

Bookbinding Process (1/2): The Wolf Queen, from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I have a very exciting comission— I’m binding The Wolf Queen, an in-game novel from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I’ve never played the game, but my client told me they enjoy collecting and reading the books in the game. According to the Elder Scrolls wiki, there are apparently 820 of them! I’m binding the one of the longer stories, which is actually broken up into 8 volumes.

In researching, it seems that the volumes seem to take on completely different binding styles, but we agreed on the style shown here. We also decided to condense these volumes into 1 book— the entire story is only about 12k words, and while the handwritten large text works well for reading the story on a small in-game window on your monitor, it’s not really practical for a physical book. That, and even if I were to print these true to size for the game, each volume would still be about 40 pages, which only equates to 10 sheets of folded paper, so it wouldn’t make for a very robust collection on the shelf.

You can see that these books in this game are actually quite weathered, and it seems like all the paper is unevenly torn. If we were to equate Skyrim’s time period with our own based on technology, it’s likely these pages would have been parchment. The in-game textures definitely support this, even for the bindings that seem to be a few centuries ahead of their time.

We agreed that antiqued cotton paper would be a suitable alternative, as enough parchment for this project would run a couple thousand dollars as-is, and I don’t believe I have the equipment necessary to print on it. I needed something with a quick turnaround for this project, so I went with this paper in the ‘Vintage Deckle’ finish in the A4 size. According to one review, it’s also short-grained, so it’s actually ideal for bookbinding.

Typesetting

I’m using Adobe InDesign to typeset this, but it can also be done with Word and other alternatives.

Here’s a guide by ArmoredSuperHeavy on tumblr.

I think Bethesda owns the font used in the Elder Scrolls games, but there is a dupe of it on dafont.com called Cyrodiil. However, it definitely feels and reads more as a modern font; it was designed with readability after all. I’m definitely going for something that feels like a Celtic manuscript, based both on the decorative Celtic knot tooling, and the Gaelic look of the font. I eventually found Kelmscott, which carries the same Gaelic characteristics as Cyrodiil, and is still relatively easy to read, but feels more calligraphic.

I also downloaded Medieval Victoriana for the decorative first letters of each chapter.

To typeset the text, I followed a tutorial article by Grace Fussell and Adobe’s guide for creating book files.

I wanted the text to look dense and almost glyphic, as many old medieval manuscripts do, while still being easy enough to read. I played around with the paragraph tools and eventually settled on this layout. While certainly not all manuscripts have multiple columns, I want this typesetting to really break the boundaries seen in most modern prints of books, so I decided on this two-column format. Some manuscripts keep the text frame smaller and in the center of the page, much like you see in later centuries when the printing area was restricted by a press, but once again, I want to emphasize the look of ‘handwritten’ manuscript, so I made sure to use wide margins.

Some other fun details I added were glyphs at the beginning of each chapter, and surrounding the page numbers.

I exported the file for print with InDesign’s ‘Print Booklet’ feature, with the 2-up perfect bound with a signature size of 8 (2 pieces of paper/4 spreads/8 text pages).

Text Block

Here’s the printed and folded signatures! I’m really pleased with how these came out— it has the exact weathered look I was trying to emulate from in-game. As an added bonus, since the source material wasn’t particularly long, the thickness of the paper (150gsm) gave the text block a good amount of volume.

Out of lack of good online reference, my client ended up sending me photos of the book in-game. I was excited to realize this book seems to be bound on cords or leather straps— kind of difficult to tell from the model. We decided to go with a slit leather strap.

I couldn’t find a great reference image of the stitch for this, but I used the same technique of punching and sewing my signatures as this double cord instructional from The Thames and Hudson Manual of Book Binding.

Endpaper

I definitely wanted to go for a more traditional endpaper, so I looked at what I had in my stash of marbled paper. I was initially drawn to this Renato Crepaldi peackock marble I got from Hollander’s, which has a beautiful red that screams “medieval” to me, but Skyrim is a cold place, so I was also drawn to go for this blizzard-esque marble. Though, I ultimately decided on this dark blue/indigo paper I got from the Paper Source.

I went for the indigo because the protagonist of this novel I’m binding, Potema Septim, the Wolf Queen herself, is associated with the color purple. Since the goal of this binding was to recreate an in-game item as it would be in-game, a bookbinder in Skyrim would also most likely want to make design choices reflecting the contents of this specific book. Or maybe they’d be illiterate and just go for the red. Either way, my client also liked the dark indigo, so that’s what we went with.

This endpaper is the cover weight of De Milo Design’s line of paper called Sustain & Heal. It’s fair trade, handmade in Bangladesh, from jute fibers.

It also has deckled edges, so I made sure to align my cuts to use that, and I tore the rest by hand to keep the natural edges consistent. This is a bit of an unconventional aesthetic choice, but it stemmed from that it’d be odd if the fly leafs were straight cut with the rest of the text block so extremely deckled.

Headbands

Keeping with the purple/indigo/blue theme, I made two-colored headbands around jute cord with DCM embroidery floss in colors 31 and 796. I basically used the technique outlined here. In retrospect though I’d recommend doing a big double endband or something bulky with this paper, since the deckled edges tend to push the endband back towards the spine and hide it.

Please continue reading here!

Process: Part 1 | Part 2 | Final Result

[exhausted-eternally]

Book Commissions

In addition to making whatever suits my fancy and selling it in my Etsy shop, I also offer custom-made books! I charge for cost of materials plus $10 an hour for labor. See below for materials costs and what I offer for options! Please feel free to send me an email if you have any questions.

* Want a book but can’t quite decide what you want the cover to look like? Feel free to browse my portfolio for ideas! * The dimensions and number of pages given in the descriptions below are merely the default. I can also make custom-sized books. * Please note that I do NOT take fanfic binding commission requests. I will, however, bind works in the public domain. I may also accept rebinding/repair commissions for existing books, which I will take on a case-by-case basis.

PLEASE NOTE THAT I DO REQUIRE COST OF MATERIALS UP FRONT

For 8.5x5.5 journals/9x6 sketchbooks:

Each book contains 50 sheets (200 pages). I use 20lbs printer paper for journals, with a choice of lined or unlined pages, and white or cream for paper color. I use 50lbs/74g medium-tooth sketch paper for sketch books. Each book comes with hand-sewn endbands and a ribbon marker.

Paper & bookcloth - $25 Full bookcloth - $35 Bookcloth & leather - $45 Full leather - $60+

Tea- or coffee-dyed papers +$10

Leatherbound books-

- cord or tape binding +$1               - metal leaf +$2               - raised shapes +$2               - punched with underlying paper/fabric +$5               - resin +$5               - painted designs +$10

For 8.5x11 journals/12x9 sketchbooks:

Each book contains 100 sheets (400 pages). I use 20lbs printer paper for journals, with a choice of lined or unlined pages, and white or cream for color. I use 50lbs/74g medium-tooth sketch paper for these sketch books. Each book comes with hand-sewn endbands and a ribbon marker.

Paper & bookcloth half-bound - $50 Full bookcloth - $70 Bookcloth & leather half-bound - $90 Full leather - $120+

Tea- or coffee-dyed papers +$20

Leatherbound books-

- cord or tape binding +$2               - metal leaf +$5               - raised shapes +$5               - punched with underlying paper/fabric +$15               - resin +$10               - painted designs +$10

If you're interested in a commission, please feel free to send me an email!

[scrollsnsketchbooks]

Commissions!

Art Cases

For all your on-the-go writing or drawing needs! Currently only one size available, but I will have more soon.

Books

Looking for a book but nothing in my shop really catches your eye? I also offer custom designs!

[sanktalinn]

The entire hungergames series for my friend @beanjang-draws !!

[glassbottlepress]

I had the pleasure of making this blank notebook for a supporter on Ko-fi. They wanted something similar to the Golden Flowers notebook I made previously, but with a black spine. When I had initially made the Golden Flowers notebook, I had intended to do a black spine, but ran out of materials doing other commissions. So thank you for allowing me to fulfill this vision I had years ago! It looks just as good as I imagined it would back then ☺️

[pickledart]

I present to you, the Lore Journal . hand painted outer leather cover, lined on the inside with fabric folded over so it doesnt fray. Inside it features a mix of custom printed lined paper and Canson watercolor paper. I faffed around with magnetic latches but this book features a small segma snap for a secure closure. This style of bindery makes the book easily refillable with only some paper/thread/needles.

Each watercolor paper has a corresponding lined paper, i kinda imagined writing a small paragraph or bulleted list then drawing/painting what it describes on the adjoining paper!

If youre interested in a custom journal like this, please DM me ! i can make them in all sizes and many configurations ! Great as a gift or somewhere special for your own art.