#ffwad

[ficwip]

[purplephloxpress]

Another year, another Fanfiction Writers Appreciation Day!!!! If you are a writer of fanfic, please know just how appreciated you are!! Fandom would be such a different space without your creativity and labors of love. 💜

Holidays are all about making traditions, and the bookbinding friends with @renegadeguild once again came together to bind copies of fics for their authors as a show of our appreciation. This year I had the absolute joy of binding Emergency Help Wanted by the wonderful @piyo-13 and even got to collaborate with her on some of the design elements! It's a Modern AU Jiang Cheng/Lan Xichen fic that starts with a "help wanted" ad.

EMERGENCY HELP WANTED

I lied when I got my job. I told them I had a kid so I could leave early from work to pick him up from daycare, take him to doctor's appointments, and occasionally miss a day when he's sick. Long story short, I'm in too deep. I didn't think it through. Looking to rent a kid for bring your child to work day. Must be a boy ages four to six, longish dark hair, likes soccer. Must also be artistic as the macaroni noodle paintings I made seem a little advanced for his age. Also, I will pay extra for someone willing to play the role of husband when dropping him off. He's a prosecuting attorney who often brings his work home. Message me for further details. Serious inquiries only.

Ok. So. I may have gone a little feral with this one. Online "help wanted" ad spiraled into loading wheel scene dividers, spiraled into fake Google search result headers, spiraled into FULLY committing to those authentic looking text messages. In full color. (There are so many. I typeset in MS Word. It was SO worth it, but god what a struggle at some points.) And don't forget the "recent searches" title page! Or the computer cutout on the cover! (It's bluescreening, just like Lan Xichen through this entire fic!) Also that cover/title page image that I just kept adding details to. (It's supposed to be Lan Xichen's desk, so it simply didn't feel right until it had sticky notes on the computer, #1 dad on the mug, scissors and measuring tape, scribbles on the sticky notes) Did I have a ton of fun designing this one? Perhaps. Couldn't say. Maybe just a tad. (This is a lie I had an ABSOLUTE BLAST!)

Historically, I've waited until I finish at least the typeset before reaching out to the author, but not so with this one! I got the idea for the fake google search results from Piyo's authors notes, teasing the contents of the next chapter. But! Those didn't start until about chapter 4! So I reached out and asked if we could collaborate and I'm forever glad I did! Not only does this have teasers for each chapter, I also got to bounce design ideas off of her, including what shade of blue and purple for the text messages. Because my friends, that is a serious matter and changed SEVERAL times throughout the process.

Also shoutout to all my Renegade friends who gave input and encouragement over the past year while I worked on this (what endpages to use? how to make this shade of green perfectly Nie Huaisang? how do we feel about this text message design? or how about this one?) - I love you all dearly and appreciate you so much for putting up with my nonsense at all times.

Binding details below the cut!

Fandom: The Untamed/Mo Dao Zu Shi

Pairing: Jiang Cheng | Jiang Wanyin / Lan Huan | Lan Xichen

Bookcloth: Aqua/Purple Dubletta from Colophon Book Arts

Endpapers: Craft Consortium Ink Drops - Ocean pack

Textblock paper: short grain cream from Church Paper

Titling: We R Memory Keepers foil quill

Endbands: leather cording core, DMC embroidery floss for the bands

Body Font: EB Garamond

Title Font: Berlin Sans FB

Text Messages: Roboto

Additional fonts: Times New Roman, Kunstler Script, Magis Authentic

Title page image from Rawpixel and designed in Canva

Various computer graphics from The Noun Project

Tumblr insists on eating and doubling text in this section at its own whim, so if there's something missing that you're curious about, feel free to DM me an ask!

[sits-bound]

Bound: The Twenty-Two Cards Series (Rookie Moves + 6 more) by peu_a_peu

I am pretty insane about this fic right now. Between this bind and the podfic I'm making of it, I am happily living in the world of these two dumb cops.

I made this for the @renegadeguild's Renegade Loves Fic(writers) event for Fanfiction Writer's Appreciation Day (which is today!), and sent it to the author earlier this month.

This bind has a couple of firsts:

First hand-sewn endbands

I am very very proud of the endbands - it has taken me many, many, many attempts to get them right. Huge props to maleeka_mols for this fantastic tutorial!

First dust jacket

I made a dust jacket because I felt like the design of the case didn't do this series justice. It just needed MORE.

Making it was fun but also very stressful. I had one chance to get the printing right (since I don't have a large format printer and so I had to get it printed as a poster, which is pricey) and thank god it all worked out perfectly.

So let's talk about the details…(other than the end bands and dust jacket.)

The 22 cards of the title reference the 22 cards of the major arcana. I am not familiar with the tarot, so I hope I didn't do anything "wrong" by choosing cards to use based on aesthetics. But it is such a fun aesthetic to use!

Weeding the HTV on the front was a lot. And then the gold of the title got a little wonky (another reason for the dust jacket, if I'm being honest) but I love the way it looks.

There's a lot of gold foiling on the inside. Each story has its own tarot card (again, chosen based on looks because I am shallow). I also made a table of contents! Just a lot of stuff. The typeset itself is fairly simple. (Would I love to have made a maximalist version like the one @slbindery made for me? Yes, but I have to accept that that is not the style I excel at.)

HAPPY (FAN) FIC WRITERS APPRECIATION DAY!

[mythrilthread]

These itsy-bitsy A7 books are three copies of white queen, red heart and snow white, blood red by @ofgeography

One copy was for me, one was send as a gift to the author, and one is for Goose @imaginariumpress who is generously helping me with actually delivering author’s copies for Fanfiction Writer’s Appreciation Day this year.

🩸 The color scheme was right there in the prompt, so here are the bloody tiny books.

🩸 The covers are white cotton hand dyed/painted with red ink; the same ink was used to paint the edges (I wanted at least some bleed, and ink does that);

🩸 Title pages feature the dark forest and the dwarf caverns;

🩸 The fancy drop caps and the page numbers are bleeding. I really love this effect for vampire stories, it’s so extra!

🩸 But probably not as extra as typesetting the entire book in blackletter, but it felt appropriate for the dark fairy tale vibe the stories got going on.

I had a lot of fun with this project, and I really recommend checking out the stories if you somehow haven’t already!

[theriverbeyond]

believing in everything (and knowing nothing at all) by @lesbianjesuslovesyou

A series of childhood memories from the Ninth.

I love this fic, it makes me ACHE for baby Gideon, and I love its exploration of Gideon's dynamics with the other characters on the Ninth as she was growing up :') this is the second fic I bound for @renegadeguild's Fanfic Writers Appreciation Day event!

Fandom: The Locked Tomb

Pairing: Aiglamene & Gideon, Gideon & Crux, Gideon & Harrow

Title font: Supernova

Body font: Garamond

Pages: 200

Size: Quarto letter

Case: Pleather book cloth (Generic amazon brand) with sword shaped cut out and hand-embossed gold foil

Endpapers: Skull Natural Copper by HimalDesign

progress pics and ramblings below the cut!

I was SO excited to try a cutout cover for this, and think the endpapers I picked were perfect for it. The Pleather "bookcloth" I used was a bit thick, and that in combination with the shape of the cut out made for some very goofy progress pics. I ended up gluing scrap paper to the tiny flaps, because they were SO at parts.

Also, there were definitely several places that were like... exposed chipboard/paper, so I used a marker to color it in to hide those issues and it worked great

I initially formatted the cover incorrectly and my printer was out of commission at the time so I couldn't re-print it, so I just cut it up to frankenstien it into what I needed! I'm REALLY happy with how the sword cutout ended up lining up with the skull -- you can see in the above photos that they aren't identical, and this is because I did not think about this at all when cutting and gluing the endpaper in. OOPS!! anyway HOORAY luck was looking out for me bc it ended up looking great anyway!

The color of the cover was honestly hard to photograph but I love how it turned out and how it looked IRL. YAYY

[emilykaldwen]

FFWAD 24 - Sins of the Father by @selfproclaimedunicorn

For my first foray into this yearly celebration with @renegadeguild, I picked the brilliant and fantastic story, Sins of the Father by @selfproclaimedunicorn. Misa has taken the fantastic AU premise 'What if Daemon Targaryen and Rhea Royce had kids?' and has run with it in the most delicious and satisfying way. The story isn't complete, but the first 'arc' has a good stopping point at a whopping 160k words, which made for the chonkiest book you could imagine.

This was the twelth book I've bound (both fic and rebinds of old favorites) and I tried several new techniques for it including rounding and backing the spine. I also stretched my legs in the formatting department and went all in with the interior. That meant ordering some special springhill paper to do these fantastic maps for the endpages. Full details behind the cut!

Typesetting: Normally I've kept my settings pretty minimal as I got used to the ins and outs of InDesign (during this, I did purchase Affinity Publisher and might end up moving to that, but I'm finally getting the hang of ID and you can pry it from my cold hands). I really wanted to mimic some of the interior of Fire & Blood for this, so I hunted down the fonts used and took an image of the decorative banner you see on the sides to use for the chapter openers. I also wanted to include timelines and family trees in true historically inspired fantasy tradition.

The family tree was created based off of the author's spreadsheet in Google Drawing, which I found to be the easiest thing to use when it comes to creating chaotic family trees like this (In the past I'd used lucid chart for a printable version, but google worked better here).

the timeline is honestly my favorite thing and I learned how to use tables in ID for the first time. I'm incredibly pleased with it. The formatting is based upon the line of kings in the source. The timeline covers the events of the first arc as printed in this particular story.

The chapter openers are some of my favorite! As the children are proud to be House Royce, I wanted to reflect that. The runes you see behind the Chapter number and title are the Floki font and name the character whose the POV for each chapter.

Since there's plenty of High Valyrian spoken and the author doesn't include the translations within narrative, it was the perfect moment to set up footnotes. I'll absolutely be doing this for my own story when I bind it!

Rounding and Backing: So this was a total adventure, but I really wanted the old book feel. I made the mistake of pressing the book for too long and lost a lot of the swell in the spine to round but it worked out AND I managed to back it a little bit. Since I wasn't doing cord tapes for the spine (this was a version of the three piece bradel), I had to troubleshoot. I ended up cutting strips of the leather cord I bought from michaels and laminating those pieces together and placing them on the oxford hollow on the spine (given how thick the book is, I wanted to give it as much structural strength as possible). The 'leather' covering you see is actually the craft leather (polyester) from Dollar Tree and it's pretty awesome but definitely has difficulties staying put with glue. I followed the normal procedure and slathered both sides up and used twine to compress the bookcloth along those leather pieces. there's a little gaping in some places which I think would help if I'm able to properly apply backing paper to the polyester.

HTV do's and don'ts: Hi! don't be me and forget to apply your teflon sheets before applying the HTV because then you fuck with the polyester but it's not too bad. The other pro-tip is to gently apply the iron to the cover so it's warm before applying the HTV so it can start to stick. I had to apply the front cover in three pieces and do the title twice. Also, it's really difficult to apply HTV to a rounded spine so I'll have to figure out how to set up the spine and cover before applying (since there's a certain amount of stretching the bookcloth over the spine). The spine might end up having to be regular adhesive vinyl for that. Also, it's stupidly hard to find metallic HTV in bronze.

Front matter and final thoughts: The bronze dragon was a lucky find through an extensive google search, and the runes surrounding it are 'we remember with fire and blood', a combination of House Royce and House Targaryen's words. Seems fitting four Yorick, Ella, and Aemon! The copyright page is mimicked off the source's style, including the AO3 information, the creative commons and fair use information, the guild stamp, a QR code to the AO3 page, and my own press stamp! The summary is pulled from AO3 as well.

All in all, I made this book twice and I loved it and learned so much every time.

I'm so happy with this project and I'm so excited to do the next arc! Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful story, Misa!

[fabrowrites]

WIP Challenge!

Rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous.  Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it!  And then tag as many people as you have WIPs.  I have deemed that this isn’t just for writing either.  Sketch titles?  Comics?  DnD campaigns?  If you have an unfinished project, it counts!!  

Hi everyone! In honor of fanfic writer appreciation day, bringing this back!

My insane taglist under the cut, but if you see this in the wild feel free to jump on!!

tagging people from nwod and fic fest! ignore the ping if you didn't want it sorry dfkjlgh but i find these fun and thought some of you might, too :D

@only-lonely-stars @rosiehunterwolf @silvermags @starlightaxolotl @guplia @stars-brownies-n-metaphors @bananaplayzz @boba-pearl @caycubone @weekend-whip @pandemonium-kidz @aroninshonour @zebaji @kumoriwrites @spinbitchzu @tirednapentity @taddymason @psychologicalwarclaire @finn-m-corvex @knowledgequeenabc @tinywriterfairy @graceful-not @jays-supersonic-dynamo @artqueen02 @basicallyjaywalker @fruit-colored-ninja @summerf0x @nocturnal-nexu @riseleon @indigosky101 @miqotepotatoe @randomcrapstories @lightning-chicken @crikkit-kitterton @colesstar @lloydenthusiast @senseigrace @the-painted-siren @ataraxixx @parateuthis @curiositythecryptid @elemom @mikewheelerfan2022 @mcfanely @rainbow-flavoured-skittles @a-big-chicken-nerd @collectiveclams @stealingyourbones @abunnsburrow @survivalshipping @gravyhoney @officercooks @laziarteest @nin-jay-go @themilosquid @fandomsareforlife @goldenavenger02 @localguy2 @blu3cl0v3rs @ghostwalloper @cboffshore @bookworm-dork-fish @raven6229

HUGE BREATH HELLO

[blueberrybindery]

The Courtship Ritual of the Hercules Beetle by kittebasu

Tooru is pretty sure he could manage the mating habits of a mosquito. It’s the mating habits of people he can’t seem to get right.

Bound for the @renegadeguild Fanfiction Writer's Appreciation Day event.

y'all, this is sort of surreal for me. the first book i ever made, back in 2021, was this fic!!! it was my initiation book!! since then i have learned so much, made so many books, and MET so many people it feels like a different lifetime.

i am so, so happy that i was able to redesign and bind a NEW AND IMPROVED version 2 and GIFT IT to the author!!! it has all come full circle; this has been my absolute favorite fic for years and years, and my little caterpillar self which could barely cut board and freehand painted a scuffed little beetle on the cover has emerged from the cocoon of LEARNING SKILLS and can now sew endbands, paint edges, make cutouts?!?!! still can't measure right though-

kittebasu, thank you so much for writing this fic. i've read and reread it so many times, i really hope you like my bind of it.

process post here.

[fleabitebooks]

More Than Genetics

By Llwyden ferch Gyfrinach

X-Men (Movieverse) | Logan/Kurt Wagner | 90,746 words | 33 chapters | Published 2013-11-11

Happy Fanfiction Writers Appreciation Day everyone! To celebrate this years FFWAD, I decided to bind this fantastic fic for an author who has just been a joy to work with through this whole process! The finished product is currently on its way to its new home!

[robins-egg-bindery]

Windows by @drgrlfriend

Derek has a new neighbor who won't stop looking.

fic by @drgrlfriend

art by @maichan808 & @andavs-main

368 pages / 83,266 words

Title Font: PP Hatton

Body Fonts: Cardo, Geo

HAPPY FFWAD!!! Thank you @renegadepublishing for putting on this event in celebration!

More on the process below the cut!

I'm so excited to be posting this book! Super grateful @drgrlfriend was so down to let me bind Windows for Fan Fiction Writer Appreciation Day. This is one of my all-time favs, and I was thrilled to give it the treatment it deserves! @maichan808 & @andavs-main were also incredibly kind to allow me to include their stunning art pieces in the book <3 And thank you @renegadepublishing for putting this event together!

I wanted the typeset to be visually interesting and move around the page, without making it difficult to read. I created unique headers for each of the 28 chapters with royalty free art, and varied placement on the page in six different configurations. I also played with the text warp to make the text work as part of the image - one of my favorites is chapter 26, "Banshee", pictured above!

I used Brick duo for this bind, as part of the vision for the front cover, which was done in silver permanent vinyl. I think the rich rust color is perfect for how I would imagine Stiles & Derek's apartment building, and the silver is incredibly reflective - my favorite part is how the vinyl catches the light on the spine, and can reflect "Windows" on whatever surface it's on (pictured above). That's not an added effect, it's just doing that!

I did @tankbredgrunt's faux double-core headband with some Sulky Gutermann I bought at a secondhand store for $0.25, and it's so pretty! A bit thin to work with, but totally worth it for the multi-color effect it gives off.

And I finally got a proper crisp hinge! I think it really brings the whole book together, thank you knitting needles (even though you were a pain in the ass).

This project also marks my 100th book! I'm rapidly approaching the two year mark of my fanbinding career with no sign of stopping; thank you to this entire community, and all of the fandoms I've been able to bring this hobby to. I love how cross-fandom it is; and for an old floater like me, it's wonderful to bring all of my interests together and have something that transcends those lines.

HAPPY FAN FICTION WRITER APPRECIATION DAY!

[gargoyleandgremlinpress]

The Dragon by Mairead Triste and Aristide

My final book of Fanfic Writers' Appreciation Day! The Dragon by @the-cimmerians is a casefic horror slashfic (the m/m kind... but really, a bit of both) circa 1999, for the TV show The Sentinel, the origin of the Sentinel/Guide trope in fanfic.

In the late nineties, Sentinel was one of the ubiquitous slash fandoms, up there with due South, X-Files, and Highlander. I fully admit I have only ever seen the pilot and some fanvids, but I absorbed SO much canon and fanon from fic over the years.

At one point, I swear I had a printed, coil bound copy of The Dragon (like the one at the end of this post about Ghosts by Torch) so of course it needed to make its way onto my to-bind list. Gay pining, eventually requited! A serial killer! Folklore monsters!

This was a fun one to play around with some of the visual elements. Black and red and silver for the cover, and I am not sad that the edges got a bit drippy with the splattering. The endpapers are red lokta paper and I went through some contortions with trimming to keep the raw edges on the paper, for the VIBES. The batwing motif fits in with the folklore, and the handprints fit a very specific scene in the story. (THAT one. The under the bed one.) Plus, teeth.

I'm pretty happy overall with how it all came together, and fit with the overall mood and themes of the fic, and with being able to share some older fic and fandoms.

Happy FFWAD, Aristide!

[dashka12]

The Golden Bird: Part 2

The Golden Bird: Part II by @pierrotwrites-hc

For (Fan) Fic Writer Appreciate Day (August 21st) I decided to bind The Golden Bird: Part 2, the second part of one of my absolute favorite fics EVER.

I tried to match the same style I did in my previous bind of Part 1 of the series, but still making it unique in itself.

The custom end papers were made from the painting Ganymede by Gabriel Ferrier with a book quote (one of multiple quotes i used in this bind as I couldn't pick just one since the prose in this story is so beautiful)

Foiled title pages because I love foil and have a lot :)

For the typeset itself, it is very similar to the one i did for part 1, except included some drop caps

Now for probably my favorite part of this bind - THE ART!

@thedaydreamingcynic has created some of the most beautiful art for the TGB and they were kind enough to let me include some of them in this bind.

The art was printed on transparent film and overlaid in the book with thin double-sided crafting tape.

Truly, all their art is stunning.

This bind was done as part of @renegadeguild Renegade Loves Fic(Writers), as a way to show appreciation to all the fic writers out there that share your amazing stories with us, by sending out a copy.

Thank you @pierrotwrites-hc for creating such an amazing story <3

HAPPY (FAN) FIC WRITERS APPRECIATION DAY

[duran-binding]

Happy Fanfiction Writer Appreciation Day!!! @renegadepublishing put on their 3rd annual of this event today and I am so excited I got to participate! 🤩

I was originally not sure if I would 😅 I wanted it to be a story that was very special to me and as luck would have it, my author responded ❤️ I've been having an absolute BLAST reading and re-reading Fate Set Right by @mltrefry-ficwriter with @maleeka_mols_creates @jen.anderson.books and @sarahemaginnis on IG the past few months as everyone reads it for the first time ❤️ I think I have read it 5 or 6 times at this point 🤣 I will be still reading this when I am 80 👵

Some details: I wanted the books to flow from light hearted colors to middling colors to dark colors to flow with the story. I tried to also translate this into the endpapers and the endbands :) endbands were gutermann silk due to my color choices was going for an ombre effect across them but that needed work xD it's ok. The top edges are gilt with holographic foil. The endpapers are marbled paper from Sustain & Heal that I picked up at the Printer's fair last year :) the bookcloth was sourced from Kater Craft auctions last year as well. Covers are hand foiled ❤️

[neptunesenceladus]

for the @renegadeguild fanfiction writers appreciation day event I did a bind of hope has bloody knuckles by the amazing @independent-variables. This event is a way to say thank you to the amazing writers in our community.

Because of the length of the fic I also added in the three other works that are apart of in our bedroom after the war. The entire bind is 324 pages, and the typeset can be found here if you want to bind your own copy.

I used bookcloth for the case, and a foil quill for the gold detailing (which I am definitely improving with I think). At the start of each work is a title page with different images, my favorite being the tundra tea plant (specifically the species Rhododendron tomentosum) at the very start of hope has bloody knuckles. I made two copies, one which I sent to the author and one for myself, with the main difference being a slightly different pattern on the endpapers in my own copy.

more photos of the inside below:

[theriverbeyond]

Eat My Words and Then Swallow your Pride by silverapples (18+)

+ its sequel fic, Denial Ain't Just a River in Egypt (18+)

Gideon prides herself on being able to get anyone she wants in bed. But when it comes to Harrow, she’ll have to do some giving first.

I'm SO excited to have bound this series as part of @renegadeguild's Fanfic Writer's Appreciation Day (August 21) event, it is one of my absolute favorite fics and such a love letter to butch subs/bottoms everywhere.

Fandom: The Locked Tomb

Pairing: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus

Title font: Engravers MT

Body font: Garamond

Pages: 128

Size: Octavo letter

Case: Arrestox Bookcloth Black with hand-embossed silver foil, featuring cover art by me!

some rambling under the cut

i forgot to take good progress pics here because besides cutting the pages/the octavo size, this bind felt very standard/nothing much new was tried, construction wise -- but I DID draw the cover art with my mouse in photoshop because i couldn't find good royalty free art that fit the Vibe and this fic deserves a bangin cover.

I went with Gideon being collared by Harrow for the design because like, yeah. Of course I did. She deserves this.

I think one of the main artistic things I would change in the future (besides photographing it against a more contrasting background OOPS) is I think I'd want a thinner tip for the foiling, I think the summary on the back turned out okay but the spine text was a bit small for the tip I had, so it is a bit hard to read.

I really like the octavo size for shorter fics, especially for fics in the 5k-15k range depending on font size/art/etc. I wouldn't want to do a standard folio or even quarto with something this short just due to like... it would turn out magazine thin, but it looks cute as hell when turned pocket sized so I'm excited to have opened up a new realm of fics to bind!

[steltrona]

Happy FFWAD!

It was my honor to make a bound copy of @badlance 's What Hearts Ease Must Queens Neglect for the @renegadeguild's Fanfiction Writer Appreciation Day.

The Markenland stories have been my favorite for a long time and I'm so jazzed to have told badlance so. This was super fun and I hope I get to do it again next year.