#dreamling bookbinding

[violetequus8]

Saint Morpheus Bookbinding pt 2: Results

here is a link to pt 1

The final products!!

I am very proud of them, and I think they all turned out beautifully. So did my illustrations:

I think you can click on them for better quality!

Before anyone asks:

No, I do not take commissions.

These copies are not available.

No, I will not be making any more in the foreseeable future.

Love,

Equus

[kulapti]

Aug 2023, bookbinding of The Silent Isle Imbowers by Tharkuun.

I’m sooo so so pleased to finally share this! I have been actively working on this for many months and waited until Tharkuun received her copy before posting so the final result would be a surprise.

-----------About this bookbinding under the cut

This binding has been one of the more elaborate pieces I have attempted so far. This has been my first binding where I (1) made three copies of a piece at once, (2) used a modified a historical illustration, (3) collaborated directly with another artist on the decorative elements, (4) finished matching art for the cover and title page, and (5) layered paint and heat-transfer vinyl for the covers. These are also (6) the first non-tiny books I have made with this style of hinge and cover attachment.

Pretty much immediately after I first read this story I felt I had to make myself a copy of this. I had a strong mental image of a vintage-looking cover for a fairy tale, with a deceptively simple design of flowers on the cover, probably with fancy metallic accents, the kind of thing you’d find in an interesting used bookstore with no summary, no text on the back, no dust jacket, just the flowers and maybe a title. I’m going to make a separate post about making this cover design a reality because oh man has it been a journey lol! I designed and drew the digital art for the cover (digital because of the cut and application method), as well as the corresponding title page illustration (pencil and dip pen, scanned, title added digitally).

When I asked Tharkuun about it she was excited to suggest I get in touch with quillingwords, who generously agreed to collaborate with me! Among her talents quilling writes calligraphy, and hand wrote both the book title and chapter headers for me to incorporate into my plans. Check OUT those chapter headers! So fancy! A font could never!! Quilling has also been very encouraging and let me yell about this project in dms for months so the final result could be a surprise for Tharkuun. Thank u so much quillingwords, your calligraphy adds invaluable amounts of swag to this project.

I was going to do some kinda neat font for the chapter headers, but quilling’s work is too cool for that and I decided to use a modified piece of a historical illustration instead. The illustration also happens to be cool as heck: I was browsing the Artstor database (an academic quality resource available for free via Jstor, my beloved) and found E. N. Neureuther's 1836 gorgeous etching for etching of the fairy tale Briar Rose, an illustration made for a printing of a Brothers Grimm recorded German fairy tale with Sleeping Beauty elements. Much to my delight this illustration not only matches the general look I wanted but is actually relevant to the story, itself a Sleeping Beauty spinoff.

Slightly less stylistically consistent are the endpapers, which are prints of two different paintings by Arnold Böcklin: Isle of the Dead (1883) in the front and Isle of Life (1888). The first painting had occurred to me as an excellent visual to go with the story, and Tharkuun and I discussed this and agreed that pairing it with the related later, more optimistic piece was too thematically appropriate to resist.

I had fun and learned a lot making these books and I am very pleased with the result!!

Materials: Archival bookboard, cardstock, cotton cheesecloth mull, archival PVA glue, linen thread coated in beeswax, paper cord, red cotton embroidery floss. Blue cotton backed with archival paper, acrylic paint, machine cut black and gold heat-transfer vinyl. Laser printed text and illustrations. Metallic scrapbooking paper.

[chubsonthemoon]

Now that her surprise copy has arrived, I can finally post pics of @moorishflower's beautiful Here there be dragons! :3

This fic is so wonderfully imaginative and huge in scale, both on an emotional and a physical level! It made me ache reading it--yanno that feeling you get staring at the sea? That! In keeping with the scifi genre and its themes of exploration, I went for a "futuristic spaceship but also old maps" vibe and used some pretty starmap scrapbook paper + shiny silver bookcloth for the case. And since there's some good ol' homoerotic cannibalism in the fic, some nice pops of red on the title cards and the painted edges :3

Endpapers were hand marbled by me at Renegade Retreat earlier this year! Here's a better photo of em bc I couldn't decide which lighting I liked better lolll:

Thank you so much for letting me bind your work, Heather!! I'm so happy to have more of your writing on my shelf <333

[mountainpresspublishing]

and if I get burned, at least we were electrified by @seiya-starsniper

The latest bind here at Mountain Press Publishing! This one was a ton of fun and made for a chuck of firsts for me as well! From making a book of a smaller size (and a different size than my usual in general!) to refreshing my Illustrator knowledge as well as some quick sticker making, this ended up being a very fun project!

Initially, I planned for this bind to be the size of a CD album (and it was), but I intended to be able to fit it within a CD case itself. However, it ended up being the perfect size of a case, which meant it didn't actually fit inside of the case.

Lessons learned there!

Thankfully, I had also picked up some CD case sleeves that I was able to package the book within to still achieve that aestethic I was going for.

Now, you may be wondering why I went for a CD size at all. This fic's title (as well as Chapter Titles) were all based on lyrics from Taylor Swift's reputation album! Which, once I found that out, helped me solidify the styling I was going for.

I looked up the Reputation album and the styling and fonts that were used on the cover images as well as the lyric booklet within, which is how I settled on the drop caps and the fonts I choose.

And here's the reference image I used for the text

You can see that the fonts are pretty similar. The header in the book also matches the header here!

And, of course, if I was diving down this copy of Reputation, I had to make a matching cover as well!

Shout out to the Sadman server's channels devoted to Ferdie and Tom and Boyd. I had plenty of good photos to sift through and choose from to get all the boys in the image!

Here's a full view of the cover, spine, and back as well. And yes, I did have to pen tool that summoning circle by hand since I couldn't find a good transparent one online!

Now, for the chapter headers, you may have noticed some peculiar images in the back. In the fic, The Corinthian as well as Dream have symbols, signatures of sorts, that they have. Old ones, made before humanity as we know it. They end up featuring a few times, mainly when the marks appear on Hob, marking him as theirs. So, of course, I had to design those as well!

The Corinthian's is on the left and sharper than Dream's, which I thought fitting for a nightmare. There's the theme of three in his, with the three sections, three lines, and three little swoops. The design is also mirrored, which ties nicely to his function as humanity's dark mirror.

For Dream, his is more fluid, more swoopy. It starts like a circle that quickly breaks into diverging lines, similar to the unreality of dreams and their meandering paths. It also looks somewhat like a treble clef, which also ties well with Dream's role and relations to the arts and creative pursuits.

The final image is of their marks combined, swooping and curling around one another.

The last major part of this bind was the stickers that I created and printed to go along side the book! Since the CD case didn't work out as I had hoped, I still wanted to add something special and unique to this gift for Seiya, so I decided to design some sticker that went along with the fic! I didn't take photos of them all cut out, unfortunately, but I do have the original sheet here.

We have the marks in color, the album cover, along with some more fic specific stickers! These were really fun to design, honestly. I have the knife one on my laptop currently! 😂

Overall, this was an amazing fic and if you're a Hobrintheus or Hobrinthian lover, you definitely need to check it out! This project was a ton of fun to work on and I'm so glad I could get a copy to the wonderful author ♥️

[kydrogendragon]

It lives!!! Hounds in book form is here!! Definitely learned a lot through this process (and know what to do better next time) but, overall, I'm quite happy with how it turned out! @fishfingersandscarves 's art made for the perfect paperback cover as well!

And, of course, thanks you so much to @xx-vergil-xx for all the blood, sweat, and tears that went into such an amazing fic ❤️

[imaginariumpress]

The second binding, for @sleepsonfutons! Another copy of A Man of Good Fortune by @softest-punk (AO3)

[landwriter]

Saint Morpheus, illustrated & bound by @violetequus8.

The sun finally came out here after nearly three weeks! First order of business: getting some much-deserved glamour shots of this gorgeous creature.

I cannot find the language to articulate how much this means to me as a gift and act of creative labour. I only hope it shows through in the pictures instead :')

Rowan has two wonderful process & results posts where you can see the three brilliant other bindings they did of Saint Morpheus, including the incredible illustrations (of which I have been BLESSED with two originals - that photoshoot will come later because I want to make a custom frame for them lol). Thank you, Ro, for a gift I will treasure forever.

[contrael]

My first attempt at a book binding✨✨ I liked Lisaveta's fic so much that I decided I just needed to make a physical copy for myself!

(well, for amateur attempt, I did fine - I was not able to carefully cut the paper block, as I had only basic boxcutter for that - but otherwise I'm pretty satisfied with the results!)

[athymelyreply]

Hi! I really want to finally embark on my journey of fanbinding @moorishflower ‘s beautiful fic Maybe Sprout Wings, however im struggling with how i might be able to convert and format the text and things like that and i would be forever grateful if anyone had any advice? please please please let me know if you have any information and don’t hesitate to reach out because i’m so excited about this project (and if you’d be willing to walk me through it or anything like that i will literally fall in love with you)

[embervoices]

Ooooooo Can the PDF of the print format be made available to other fanbinders!?

for the upcoming chapter of You create me against your lips by the wonderful @delta-pavonis

[violetequus8]

Saint Morpheus Bookbinding, pt 1: Behind the Scenes

(This will be a very long post)

Three weeks ago, I had already had an idea of what project I wanted to torture (positive) myself with: so I giddily hopped off and asked @landwriter if I could bind her achingly good Dreamling fic Saint Morpheus. (If you haven't read it, consider this my blanket glowing recommendation).

Permission granted, I was off!

People have asked me about my work before. This post is not meant to be educational (though all I learned was through Sea Lemon on YT; don't ask me for a more in-depth explanation bc I am not equipped to give it), but I didn't want to have took all these in-progress pictures for nothing. Also I enjoy talking about my work, and maybe some of you will find this interesting.

The formatting-page process undoubtedly takes the longest. I do not use any software, so this is a lot of me using the copy-paste button and praying to any god that will listen that I don't mess it up.

(Formatting: I used 10 pt Sitka Text with no alignment. The pages themselves are a template I made in LibreOffice)

I had also decided to complete illustrations for this, which created additional pages. I had a lot of fun with those, which I'll be posting in pt 2.

Once all the pages were done, it was time for printing!

I had a bunch of fat stacks like this, which then had to be cut to size and folded into the page signatures.

(a mostly-complete text block)

I also did fancy stuff for the inside pages, the ones that go on the outside of these text blocks and which would hold the text block to the cover.

(this is one, which was completed)

(here's another one, which was in-progress)

Then came the tedious work of punching all the holes, so I could actually bind the pages together!

(I had actually bought an awl over the holiday break. Can you imagine i was going all this with a needle before?)

(lots of sewing)

YAY! Text blocks were done!

Then I could finally get to work on the covers, which had been littering my floor for weeks.

My desk was also a proper mess, but that's just what happens.

Cutting the board and arranging the covers is fun, except when I knew I was on the home stretch and ended up messing up things.

(in-progress cover. I use PVA glue)

(in-progress front cover I was doing illustrations on)

And I would be nothing without failing a few times, so I might've accidentally glued on a text block upside down on that cover. Which then I had to rip off and rebind. I had to do that twice, actually, cause I fried my brain a few times over while working on these.

There's also some things I did which I did not take pictures of but will be included in the follow-up: I gilt the page edges, which I thought was a nice touch.

And now for the finished product....

[kulapti]

Sept 2023, bookbinding of The Wine-Dark Sea by @moorishflower.

Marbled paper by @aetherseer. Design notes under the cut. Fic link in reblogs.

Design notes: The codex design was largely driven by the red and black marbled paper handmade by Æthereal Press and the work's theme of embracing darkness, both the literal darkness of the ocean and space and figurative darkness of what is feared and unknown. Aether generously gave me scraps of the paper I used here for both the cover and endpapers, which reminded me immediately and compellingly of blood in black water, so of course I made an edgy tiny book with it. Some of my friends also gave the opinion the cover looks like stylized wounds, which is again quite appropriate for the fic.

Fun new stuff I tried on this one:

stitched a strip of scrap cloth for faux endbands (looks good)

stenciled title (good try, bad choice of paint)

layered bookcloth design (excellent, much easier than expected)

Octopus illustrations are Octopus macropus (title page) and Octopus vulgaris (epilogue) by Comingio Merculiano in the 1896 monograph Cefalopodi viventi nel Golfo di Napoli (sistematica) by Jatta Guiseppe, accessed via Wikimedia Commons.

Materials: Covers use rayon Italian bookcloth, archival bookboard, marbled paper, cardboard scrap, handmade paper, pH-neutral PVA, machine cut-stencil and acrylic paint. Laser printed text on archival paper; bound with 25/3 linen thread, 100% beeswax, cotton scrap, and cotton cheesecloth mull.

[chubsonthemoon]

Last Binderary book is DONE!!!! This is the incredible Maybe sprout wings, by @moorishflower.

This post is going to be a doozy, so gonna just skip straight to the cut!

INTERIOR

INTRODUCTION

I really wanted to model this bind after my own copy of the Odyssey, (which is all highlighted and bookmarked and annotated to hell from my Great Text courses in undergrad ehe, so this bind was such a fun trip down memory lane!). But beyond just the cover/general aesthetic, I also wanted to give the book a similar feel to these kinds of editions of classics--there's usually an introduction, translation notes, and other supplementary materials, right? Like, a physical manifestation of the work of many, many people, all having conversations with one another across time and space.

So that's what I did! I wrote a short introduction (I will also probably post it to my AO3/my blog as well, in the name of preservation etc. etc.) and began reaching out to folks in the fandom who I knew had created art and meta for the fic. The result? 18k words of analysis, comments, and meta, and nearly twenty pages of art!

And this is what I love most about this bind, I think! This book is the work of several people--truly a collaborative work by the fandom--all of whom I will now be shamelessly calling out below :D

CHAPTER HEADER ART

First and foremost, this book would not be what it is without the gorgeous header art by @fancy-rock-dove! Thank you so much Dove for letting include your work, and for being so supportive and kind these past few weeks about this bind <3 You in particular have contributed so much to this book (which I will be getting more into in the next section ehe), and I'm so psyched I get to hold your art and words, too!

NOTES ON THE TEXT

This section was divided into four parts: Asks and Answers, Meta, Selected Comments, and Chapter Heading Art: Process

For Asks and Answers, I trawled Heather's blog for meta she had written in response to questions and other meta about the fic. Asks came from @fancy-rock-dove, @quillingwords, @kulapti, and myself! (I THINK I got all of them--tumblr's search function is finnicky even on its best days, so so sorry if I missed something T_T) I first got hooked into reading this fic because of one of these asks, so I'm very fond of this section in particular :D

For Meta, I included two wonderful essays written by @pastrypuppy (also known as @kulapti) about Hob as an author figure and the Disrupted Fisher King narrative in MSW. Her analyses were so fascinating and I just had to include them in the book! (And thank you as well for your permission, friend!) (also hello fellow Renegade comrade 🫡)

For Selected Comments, I owe everything to (once again :3) @fancy-rock-dove, whose insights are the epitome of transformative fandom at work. I'd look for their comments after I read every chapter to see what their takes were on this or that element of the story, and every single time I would go "!!!!! I didn't even realize!!!" or "OOOOOOOH I hadn't thought of that!!" It was like being in a lecture hall and always whipping your head around when one of your classmates raised their hand, because you knew they were going to say something fascinating that you hadn't considered before.

Aside from one of my own comments, Dove's comments make up the entirety of this section (for which I owe you my life--your long-form responses to fics are a gift to this world) but GOSH was it also so much fun going through the comments section while typesetting and seeing all the keyboard smashing, yelling, and crying from the other commenters. Communal nature of storytelling and ongoing meaning-making of fanfiction, babey!

And finally for Chapter Heading Art: Process: once again Dove coming in clutch with some wonderful insights into the design of each of the chapter heading art pieces! This kind of stuff is honestly my favorite: meta about art for a fic which is, in turn, a transformation of an existing story (not even to mention that The Sandman is its own kind of fanfiction of existing mythologies and histories)--I just!! Think it's all really, really neat :'D (for more coherent/polished thoughts on this pls see my introduction asjdfkls)

ART

The art gallery!!! A million thanks to @fishfingersandscarves, @honeyseller, @jazzpsych, @doctor-rainbowfoxey, and (HI AGAIN DOVE) @fancy-rock-dove for granting me permission to include all of your beautiful pieces!

As usual for artworks in my binds, I printed each piece out on specialty photo paper to really make the colors pop, then sewed each page separately to the text block! Behold, everyone's beautiful beautiful pieces!

The art gallery also satisfies the certain "oooh shiny" part of my brain that always activates when I see pictures in a book, so am also very fond of this section :3

CONSTRUCTION

And now on to the nitty gritty stuff! I used the German Bradel binding technique again, my second time using it. Even though it's more complicated than the case bind, I really love how it gives you the full board space for the cover designs (~it's free real estate~). Keep it a secret but I kiiiiiiind of made a small goof in the last few steps (I did the turn-ins a step too early and so had to paste an extra sheet of cardstock to secure the spine to the boards, whoopsie), but it's a pretty small difference, aesthetically speaking, so it wasn't the end of the world XD

Edges are once again fake gilded, but this time I tried something new with the colors! I did two layers of acrylic paint--one watered down shade of red for the base, then one metallic gold on top of that. I really like the red/gold effect! I'll have to keep experimenting with this kind of layering:

ALSO. Y'ALL! I think I'm finally getting the hang of endbands!!! Many thanks to the folks at Renegade who hosted all the endband workshops last month--I'm still working through them, but even the few sessions I've seen have been TREMENDOUSLY helpful. I learned that tension is Very Important, as well as thread thickness, so I tried doubling my thread and keeping a Very Close Eye on how I was holding the threads while doing the beads. And behold! I still have a ways to go (and one day I would LOVE to do the fancier designs), but I'm v happy with the progress I've made so far!

And finally the covers!! ARCHIVAL MOD PODGE MY BELOVED. I printed on the same matte presentation paper that I used for the art, then did several coats of archival matte mod podge + a pass of gloss mod podge over the title strip to make it ~shiny~. Then once those had dried and I'd adhered them to the boards, I sprayed two layers of matte clear acrylic sealer (also mod podge!) to finish it off. I had some issues with the paper tearing when I handled it before it was fully dry, but luckily the blemishes were small enough that it was easy to do spot corrections with my black acrylic paint. And now I know to be more patient next time LOL

(some non-photoshoot shots that show the shine a little better!)

FINAL THOUGHTS

I had a lot of thoughts while I was binding this book--about Sandman fandom, about Dreamling fandom, about the Odyssey, about storytelling, about fanbinding, about Binderary, about Renegade, about my friends--but really what came to mind the most was gratitude!

Simply put, I'm so grateful to everyone I've met both in this fandom and throughout the years I've been active online--this is SO fun, y'all. It's so much fun to love stories together--to talk about them, to write them, and of course to bind them! I hope I've adequately conveyed that gratitude.

But of course, this book would not exist without the wonderful words of @moorishflower. Heather, thank you so, SO much for sharing your stories, thoughts, and time with us--it is always a happier, better day when I get an email notif from you and when I see you on my dash. I love your work so much, and I'm so happy I finally get to put it on my shelf! So thank you so much again, for everything <3

and OKAY THAT'S IT FROM ME FOLKS!!!!! Binderary 2023 is officially a wrap! I had SUCH a blast--will probably write up a reflection post on it uhhhh after I take a very long nap ajslkdfjslk _(:3」∠)_

all my love! <3

[chubsonthemoon]

AHHHHHHHH I'm SO happy they made it safely!!! Absolutely bonkers seeing them in your hands, friend <3 Thank you so much, as ever, for your kind words about all the details; truly, the highest compliment for a binder when someone notices the little things!!

And oh gosh YES holding fic in meatspace is just. WILD and I'm so glad that you get to experience it now with your own writing. I adore every word in those books, and I'm so happy I can communicate even a little bit of that love back to you, and that you get to hold it, now and forever! (and AHHH YES thank you soso much again @fishfingersandscarves for letting me include your beautiful art!)

<333!!!

BOOKS, GUYS

@chubsonthemoon​‘s bound TWO(!!!) (one and a SURPRISE EXTRA ONE) pieces of my Sandman fanfiction and they got here in the mail, and they are the most perfectly gorgeous pieces of bookbinding! Please excuse the slightly dodgy cellphone camera quality, but - look! Look at the gorgeous stitching, and typesetting, and the absolutely perfect way the bindery mark nestles into the gold marbling on the binding paper! (Also, thankyouthankyouthankyou again to @fishfingersandscarves​ for the gorgeous art and for letting Chubs add it in.)

I was going to put them on my bookshelf and stare lovingly up at them and feel very much like a real writer, but so far I’ve mostly just carried them around the flat with me so I can behold them in my direct line of sight at all times. They are about 20 cm. from me on the couch as I type. I can’t really get pictures of how nice the raised lettering is or how satisfyingly smooth the edges are, but it IS and they ARE.

Thank you so much, Chubs it’s so, so kind of you - I love these books, and getting to actually physically hold these stories feels deeply surreal and wonderful all at once.

[mountainpresspublishing]

Hounds!

Stats: 390,159 words, 56 chapters, 8hr print job, 6hr bind, 1240 total pages

A behemoth of a bind. So, a while back, I posted an earlier version of this bind for my first paperback attempt. It didn't end up going super well (the glue I had was not holding strong enough for the number of pages, plus some technique issues, I'm sure)

So! We tried it again after adjusting the typefacing, too to be a larger font (which made one book into two), and I think I've gotten down a good paperback technique for myself now! Only took five tries 😅

But overall, I am quite pleased with how it finally turned out! The only thing I wish i had was an oversized guillotine cutter or a nicer way to trim the edges. I did sand them as best I could so the top and bottom are okay, but the side could use a nicer trim. Ah, well! Maybe one day I'll treat myself to a fancy one!

[moorishflower]

Standard Intro Post

Hullo! I'm Heather. I've gone by moorishflower on the internet for a very long time.

Mostly, I write things. Right now I'm taking a break from writing until I find something that grabs my interest again.

You can find my writing on AO3.

Please consider this post blanket permission to create noncommercial transformative fanworks of anything I write. I only ask that you link me or @ me or otherwise notify me if you do! I love fanart, podfics, playlists, bookbinding, all of it! If something I've written inspires you to create something else, that's the highest compliment I can ever possibly get.

Feel free to DM me or send me an ask whenever you want! I love talking to people! I'm slow about it sometimes, but I am trying to get better!

Finally, I rarely answer comments on AO3, though I read every single one (and often go back to reread them!). This is more out of a lack of spoons than anything else. I'll answer ones that ask a direct question, but usually I only answer a few of them before needing to stop. If you want to tell me something and to guarantee an answer, message me (don't send me an ask!) here on Tumblr. I find these a lot easier to process and answer. Who knows how brains work, huh?

Hope you have a wonderful day <3

I participated in Round 1 of Dreamling Bingo! I got some badges!!!