#my bookbinding

[mothdogsart]

It’s been a minute since I made a book, but I’m finally done with this copy of The Grindr Logo Doesnt Even Have a ‘G’ In It, an Aziraphale/Crowley fic by @indieninja92 ! This story has fucking everything. It’s achingly tender, funny, hot, and heartwrenching by turns, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

(Tumblr mobile refuses to let me paste links for whatever reason, but it can be read on AO3.)

I had a hell of a time figuring out a design forthis one. Instead of designing a dust jacket like usual, I opted for a paper label/cover and I think it turned out really well! The silk moire was a real bastard to work with and was more finicky with the glue than I like, so I’ll be sticking to cotton-based bookcloth in the future. The iPhone text headers were fun to play around with though! 😄

Technical details ➡️

Book cloth: Silk moire in platinum from Hollander’s

Endpapers: Chiyogami fireworks from Hollander’s

Fonts: SF Rounded (title) and Sabon (body)

Designed in Photoshop and Canva

‼️ My binds are not for sale. Authors and artists can request gift copies. Keep fanfiction free and legal! ‼️

Tagging @goodomensafterdark for visibility

[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!

[woodlandwarbler]

Had so much fun binding still need your teeth around my organs for the Renegade Tiny Book Bang this summer!

Typeset (and photos) by @just-a-pollicle.

This fic is gorgeous and set in a swamp, the main character has purple eyes, and the trio ship is called Bouquet, so I had so much to visually work with. I kept picking it up and going "what if I add just one more thing..."

Materials/techniques below the cut

Bookcloth Duo Lagoon. Edge and title paintJaquad Lumiere Halo Violet Gold. Cover paper by Southwest Pattern House.

Some of my earliest sewn endbands, and my first Oxford Hollow! Title was stenciled on, which I would not do again at this size on a rounded spine. Edges were power sanded to smoothness before being painted.

[chocolatepot]

Did just a little bookbinding project this weekend. A few days ago, I came across this prayerbook from 1895 by Lilian Montagu, an important figure in turn of the century Reform Judaism. It's a fascinating primary source and piece of ephemera - written for the needs of busy, young working-class Jewish women, with prayers for things they would expect to deal with such as going into service, having to work on the Sabbath, and getting engaged. The final prayer is for facing antisemitic persecution.

I really love trying to match historic typesets. I retyped this largely in Century Schoolbook, with the numbers in the publishing date and table of contents in Bembo Std in order to get them oldstyle, not on the baseline. (The back copy is also in Bembo Std. I don't know how I obliterated the Renegade Bindery logo.) The blackletter font in 2001 Rotunda Formata, which was the closest match to the original I could find, although it's still unsatisfyingly different in a few ways. And one little ornament on the cover from Sughayer Separates, a very very useful group of fonts for historical typesets.

Unfortunately I'm just noticing now that I messed up the cover! Forgot about the border and the "Price Twopence." But in general, I think this looks quite a lot like the original - a credible piece of late Victorian ephemera.

Because the original is in a nonstandard page size - very tall and thin - I decided to make this version out of a nonstandard page size. I used some paper I'd had cut down to "executive" size a while back ... although I'd forgotten that my printer gets stupid with smaller page sizes, and messes up the margins. Annoying.

[hms-tardimpala]

Ficbinding: The Inexhaustible Silence of Houses by Askance

The fic: SPN, Castiel/Dean Winchester, T, 31.8k I've been trying to read more longfics* this year in order to get my brain used to reading again, and I've followed rec lists to do so. That means I'm only now discovering the big classics and popular authors of the fandom, and I'm having a great time. This fic is a beautifully crafted horror story that gripped me and that I didn't want to let go. I rarely read Cas POVs but this worked great on me. This story has everything that makes horror great: an unreliable narration, an oppressing atmosphere, and hints you catch too late.

*With my attention span, "longfic" starts at 25k words.

The bind: After several books that were a little complex or eccentric, I wanted to do something simple. I used my beautiful dark green cloth (my camera murdered the true color of it) because the story is set in a forested area. Dean and Cas settle in an old house, so it seemed fitting to use that magnificent magnolia endpaper that could be a wallpaper in a house like that. I used pale pink headbands and ribbon because 1) I've never used pink in a bind and 2) it's charming and I really wanted to represent that atmosphere of coziness the start of the fic has. Dean and Cas try to settle down and make a home of their own in the fic, and I thought that these colors would call to mind an old house fairly well.

I didn't use a lot of decorations this time, I kept the typesetting plain, like I imagine the books that Cas collects in the fic are. I put a house on the title page and a house in flames at the end of the book, iykyk. The only notable thing is that I used a serif font, which I wouldn't normally do for Supernatural. That's because most fics I read are in Dean's POV, and he's a sans serif guy, unlike Cas. Obviously. Anyway, I looked for the fonts that would be the easiest to read in a small book (A6 format, final size 12,6cm x 9,5cm).

Craft specifics to add?

Everything went very well this time except for the trimming of course. I think I played it too tight, I wanted to trim too little and the signatures twisted in the guillotine, so I ended up with an uneven textblock. I reprinted it all, trimmed by hand, sanded the edges (I'm still perfecting that technique) and I was good to go. There are little imperfections because I sanded before I sewed, but I like them.

I'm really proud of the spine, it ended up nice and round. I didn't let the glue dry for as long as usual before I took a hammer to the spine. Should do it again.

The corners are good and this cloth with paper backing took to the grey board like they were making love. It feels so tight and clean.

I used new tools I'm incredibly happy with: a rotary cutter and a quilting ruler.

Fonts: Optimus Princeps (title and author name), Garamond (chapter titles), Gentium Book Basic (text). All free on Dafont.

Materials: Green cloth from Schmedt, 2mm grey board, 80g/m² ivory-colored paper, synthetic bookmark and headbands. Endpaper from Schmedt.

Feel free to ask me more about materials and fonts (or whatever), it won’t bother me at all to tell you what I used, I just can't think of anything else right now.

[namorssideburns]

Finally my target storybook rebind is complete! This is my most elaborate rebinding project yet, featuring an edge painting and hand-woven endbands.

And the best part?

The accompanying bookmark made from the original spine :) featuring my favourite doctor :):)

Process under the cut!

This is what it looked like before I started.

I made the case before I did the rest since the final dimensions were already decided, and I was waiting for my new book press to arrive so I could do the edge painting. I made the case with the constellation fabric I already had in my stash as book cloth, with a bit of iron-on interfacing.

Then I did the edge painting, and after that I glued on the ribbon bookmark and wove the endbands. Then just casing in!

This was my first edge painting, and I am surprised by how simple it was to get it to work. I was worried I wouldn't be able to get the layer of paint thin enough! But when it dried it wasn't too hard to separate the pages. The red endpapers were mainly inspired by the twelfth doctor's iconic red lined coat (can you tell i'm obsessed with him?), and provide a really cute contrast against the rest of the predominantly blue binding. The endbands look quite nice, though they are not exactly long enough and don't go right up against the case. The kind of thing only I would notice!

[missaphelion]

First time doing a fully printed paper cover instead of bookcloth. I also threaded red string along the backs as part of the design.

I definitely need to figure out some kind of protective coating for the paper if I want to do this again, there's already smudges! But overall it really works just as well as bookcloth, and allows me to do more intricate designs.

[almostzenithbindery]

First (official) book bound by Almost Zenith Bindery! This is A Little White Lie by RosesForApril, a Space AU DSMP/SBI story with a dash of misunderstandings given that they're all different species (Human, Piglin, Elytrian, Phantom). 7,213 words, 128 pages. This is a sextodecimo sized book printed on letter paper (small books are my main interest right now to be honest).

I wish I'd taken more photos of the process, but oh well. It's the first official because I technically made a fanbinding with cardstock instead of book cloth, but I don't count that one as my true "first." The pink book cloth was made by me thanks to lots of YouTube tutorials, and as of late, I've been making more for future projects.

A big thanks to @renegadeguild for their incredible discord server. I was too busy during Binderary to do anything more than watch as many videos as possible and begin learning how to typeset. While I'm often too shy to speak up at all on discord, I've been trying to learn from all the advice that's so readily available by this amazing group and all the amazing and helpful people on it. And that imposer is a lifesaver. I've needed to tweak how I use it to make my signatures smaller as I've had trouble binding larger signatures, but I could never figure out how to make small books without that wonderful imposer.

I'm still new to Tumblr and Discord so this was actually finished in July but I'm only getting around to sharing it now.

It has all definitely a learning process, creating the book instead of just watching other people make them. I've got a whole list of what to do next time to be better, but it's been a ton of fun learning. I've always loved reading and writing fanfiction, so being able to create physical books to read from fanfiction I've enjoyed has been great.

Next project will hopefully be up soon as I've actually just finished making it. Next comes pictures and getting the whole post together...

[purplewitch156]

Years and years ago, my brother got into mixing cocktails and, over that time, we have acquired a very large collection of favorite recipes, most of them coming from KindredCocktails.com. When I started getting into bookbinding, my bro thought it would be a fun thing if I put our favorite internet recipes into a physical book.

The initial plan was for these to be in a single volume and, after nearly two years of transferring and formatting the recipes, I realized that the book would be too big and I feared it being unwieldy. Plus, I like the idea of adding in new discoveries and binding new editions. If it was already massive, there wouldn't be room to grow.

So I made a new document and pretty much started over. I realized that I wanted to change a few aspects of the design, so it was only a painful return to start for a few days. lol

(The drink Harry orders in A Deathly Visit because I can't help myself)

I'm making three copies of each volume. One for us, and the other two will be Christmas gifts to my sister and to one of my aunts -- both cocktail lovers. The endsheets are my own marbled paper. Here are the endsheets on the other two textblocks:

To say that I am proud of these little books is a massive understatement. Fingers crossed that the other two will finish up as nicely as the first one did.

[mothdogsart]

So excited to share my latest bind! This is a Good Omens fic called Pray for Us, Icarus by Atalan/@brightwanderer 💐

I went a little nuts with the floral designs in this one. The cover was so much fun to put together, and I somehow managed to match the bookcloth color to the headband color perfectly. I also made the chapter headers look like Aziraphale was gathering his bouquet from Crowley throughout the years:

I can’t add another photo on mobile, but Part 7 has two wine glasses with apple slices 🥰

Technical details follow ➡️

Fonts: Glamore (title) and Sabon (body)

Cover material: Allure bookcloth in Mudpie

Dust jacket image: Abraham van Beijeren, Creative Commons usage

Endpapers: Renato Crepaldi

Text block: Hammermill 70lb Ivory

Designed in Canva and Procreate

The fic can be read at http://archiveofourown.org/series/1448647

❗️My binds are not for sale. Authors can request gift copies.❗️

[mothdogs]

New bookbinding tools got me feeling like a 50-year-old man after a Home Depot spree

[woodlandwarbler]

The book I made for the fourth annual Renegade Book Exchange, National Service by burntcopper.

This was so much fun to design and create. I got to use my new Silhouette and this is the best I've ever managed to hand foil. Absolutely thrilled with how the use of the latch came out, I was scared the hinges on the side with no textblock spine would just collapse but they held together!

ETA: Thank you @geminibookbinding for sharing a gorgeous book in this style that was a huge inspiration and answering my questions about a work you finished multiple years ago ✨

[chocolatepot]

Showing you my latest project, as the author has received their copy!

This is Clarity, by @kat0nline - a fantastic fic based on the premise that 1) Ed and Stede do leave the Academy together but 2) Stede hits his head and gets amnesia! Ed has to try to bring Stede back while staying with him in his old home on Barbados. It is beautiful.

I used a lovely marbled paper for the covers to imitate the look of 18th century books, and did the cover label in 1782 Thurneysen (a period font) with a Sughayer Separates ornament for the line.

(... Ignore all those wavy pages ...) The coral/seaweed paper doesn't look as historical, but it's based on a cotton print design from the late 18th century.

The main title, as well as chapter headings, is Metamorphous, which I realized after the fact reminded me of Twilight. But checking the Twilight covers, this is clearly not that font. So I have no idea what wires my brain is crossing. The curlicues are Bergamot Ornaments.

The body text is Garamond, 10pt, with 10pt spacing, which is frankly too small and too close together. :( I actually started this ages ago and it just took me forever to finish - nowadays I tend to use 11pt Garamond with 14pt spacing, which is much less cramped.

I put all the author's notes toward the back, marking the chapters. And then I put this lovely public domain ship at the end. You know, because of the pirates. (I'm not a graphics person.)

A nice pic of the endband. I'm very glad to have moved to premade ones, because I can just stick them on and get on with the binding! The hinges are a tad too small but I think I have finally learned my lesson on that score.

What I've cleverly not shown here is that I absolutely CHEWED UP the edges of my copy trying to trim them. I think I need to give up on trimming because I can't seem to make the chisel sharp enough to do it and I have yet to get a remotely satisfactory result with a box cutter.

[hms-tardimpala]

Ficbinding: the Cultivation series

Over the weekend I bound the Cultivation series by xxSparksxx.

The fic: The Hobbit, bagginshield, rated G and T, 25.8k The series is composed of Roots and the sequel Branches. Synopsis for Roots:

Here in Erebor, among the Dwarves who had reclaimed their home with blood and sweat, Bilbo could almost forget that he was a Hobbit of the Shire. He could almost forget that Hobbits were not as other beings of Middle-earth, and that a mountain devoid of rich plant life was not the place for one such as he.

The fics are set post Battle of the Five Armies. Thorin and his nephews survived, and Bilbo settled in the rebuilding Erebor, but it starts to affect his health in a dire way. In the second fic, a certain Frodo Baggins appears... These fics are incredibly well-written, they're about cultural differences a lot, and that's one of the things I like the most about Thorin and Bilbo. The secondary characters are great too, special mention to Tauriel. And I loved Bilbo in this story, and I have a really hard time finding versions of him I like in fics (even in the book and movies, tbh, I'm a more of a Thorin guy).

The bind: I'm continuing my foray into smaller books (smaller than an A6 format) with this. I chose green for the cover and bookmark and brown for the headbands to go with the nature theme of the story. As usual, no titles on my books.

Things I'm happy about:

the margins: I'm learning to use my guillotine well and this is the first book I'm very happy with regarding margins. I tend to cut too much and struggle to cut straight, but this is a beauty.

the well-rounded spine

the decorations at the beginning and end of the stories, and next to the page numbers

the typesetting in general, with the drop caps and fonts.

All the things I'm less happy about are linked to the material I used for the cover. It's too-thick pleather that's not made for bookbinding, so I can't make a crease near the spine with it, I can't make elegant corners, and other minor flaws. The thing is bookbinding materials are expensive, and I can't put too much money into what is ultimately a hobby, so I have to use my stock of cheap and not great materials first.

But I really like this one! It's sturdy and small and nice, and it'll make rereading this series very pleasant.

Feel free to ask me about materials and fonts, it won't bother me at all to tell you what I used, but I'm too lazy rn to write it in this post that's long enough already.

[namorssideburns]

My latest bookbinding project has been this french-link stitch journal, the first I've done. The cover is a very nice pattern of paper I picked up at my local art supply shop. It's a bit wonky but I think it turned out pretty good!

[missaphelion]

Here are all of the painted edges I've done so far. So sad the one I'm working on currently is too large to trim so I can't marble it.