my visual art and poetry work!

that image on the inner covers i REALLY wanted to use in sim1 but never figured it out. i think they look so good as inner covers!!.... its a photo from one of my more desperate moon photography attempts, the one of the "pumpkin moon" as i think of it (the moon was v orange that night). It's a photo of me either accidentally hitting the shutter while moving, or moving the camera during an attempt at a long exposure, or some other wild shot in the dark (haha) of me trying to wrangle together a shutter speed and aperture that would let me capture that moon. I think it captures that thinly veiled franticness that Sunlight is moonlight has really well :']

also after despairingly googling how to photograph open book spreads i FINALLY found a very good idea of using fishing line to hold down the pages and editing it out in post. worked AMAZING and no more fearing for my book's life with blue tack or washi tape which never really worked anyways AH YAY i CANT believe it took me this long to come across this idea argh but so glad this strat is in my life now!!!

edit: i realized i talked abt wip/process thoughts here already but uhhh i already started getting into more detail below so i'll just keep this too haha:

most of the new pages added were me trying to use my remaining/new shitty moon photos i had taken since SiM 1st edition, but it was kinda difficult figuring out how to do that without breaking the flow

scratch that it was REALLY difficult. so often during the creation process for my books I get to a point where, after setting up all the dominoes that is brainstorming and figuring out logistics, i just kinda let them fall and everything starts sweeping out in one great falling

buuuuuut going back to a piece to try and insert my 2025 self into my 2023 work? fucking hard as hell. my headspace was so different... theres a spread i dont rlly like that i added but i at least dont think it ruins it entirely lol

+here's a video of the book to see it in 3d space a lil better (I just can't add two videos in 1 post that's why they're separate)

Not Too much process/yapping for this post (well. comparatively to my other posts lol) cause its pure craft not conceptual art haha

I used japanese stab binding cause the original loose papers already had an easy 3 hole punch in them with a wide enough margin on the side for the text to be easily visible (truly perfect mwah mwah)

I got to use these fun papers that most of em (the dark green one on the cover specifically) aren't rlly my vibe but they've got a PERFECT fleur de lise-y fancy renaissance...y (im sorry art historians im SORRY) kind of thing going on for swordfighting academy vibes

The Folder

I've been DYIN to figure out how to make a lil folder envelope thing for a journal and THIS WAS THE PERFECT OPPORTUNITY... ever since I got gifted this journal from a friend I was OBSESSED with how this journal constructed its folder in the back. It EXPANDS out!! All the folders I've ever seen e.g. on binder covers are slim and narrow because it doesn't expand its like 1 rectangle glued down at the edges. But this has accordion folds...... ough

SO!!! I had a GREAT time reverse engineering this by slightly lifting the journal folder and peering at its corners with a flashlight LOL (no damage dw yaay)

I tested it out on a scrap paper: (and I'll be saving this in my binder of paper folding/book binding templates for future reference)

^^^And here's a photo of me testing how the cover looks with the "folder" cover sticking out (+with scrap paper inside it cause there was glue still drying)

You'll notice in the final photos at the beginning I added a triangular "envelope" flap to close the folder; this was to prevent the precious certificates from just falling out + protect them a lil more! The folder in the journal has the opening facing the inside not the outside, but with how small of a gap I had to work with between the opening+the gutter I didn't want to orient it that way for mine (and I didn't want to make my Extra Third cover I had to make for the folder any bigger than it had to be)

I looove you sunlight is moonlighttt

The great thing about making multiples of this book (that was initially a theory and now confirmed works) is that I could order just ur typical perfect bound soft cover photobook in bulk.... and then manually cut out the pages by hand by myself!! (unlike cough There Are Good Things Yet to Bury which is another project that I want to make multiples of but is LITERALLY going to take years because I need to figure out how and apply for grants and blegh cause it has So Many custom die cuts....)

^^^I put my small cutting matt to protect the pages I'm Not cutting (i DID unfortuantely fuck up 1 book by cutting two pages accidentally nooooo), and covered it in that cream coloured paper so it wouldn't scratch the pages

Though I've noticed most (all????) books have a faint square outline where the cut is on the opposite page???? huh??? are the edges of the square I cut out digging into the opposite page or something and leaving a mark like a papercut??? huh???

The second edition has a few more pages/images than the first edition (of which there is only 1 copy of n he is for mee cause im sentimental)

I spent waaay too long nitpicking over the images n placement and flow; twas my first time kind of making changes/additions to a "already completed" project which felt very different and I was worried the new pages would feel out of place because they were made when I was in a different headspace u know? But I think it turned out good :']

I was also nervous because it was my first time ordering a photobook from an outside printer (ie for the first edition I just. printed it myself at art school). And one of my gripes about the first edition was that it printed a lil too dark, which is like just kind of the pain point of making this book... SO many night scenes of pure black sky haha just huge areas of blackness with only very subtle variation. I was worried I was gonna order my 25 copies and they'd all be unusable just because of how dark my photos were

But! I'm actually quite happy with the print quality. Only issue is with some (mostly) minor scratches and faint white lines/a white smudge that got printed on like 3 books; mainly 8 copies affected total but I think 1-2 more had more minor issues (like a faint grey dot on one of the pages or smth)

^^^these are some of the photos I sent to the printer to report an issue with em actually lol so we'll see how that shakes out; maybe I can get a reprint? don't know how that works we'll see

I actually only rlly met n talked with my tablemates AT this event lol; esp cause the class we met in I was auditing (sort of Ah essentially I wasn't there all the time lol). Was lovely to meet them n get to know them But it was v funny when ppl came up being like 'ooh is "East Van Student Books" like a collective wht do u do' n we're like oh um no we're just uhh all from ECU and we got a table together to save money n we all were in the same class once LOL

my tablemates didn't bring as many items as me + had varying availability due to life things so we had more tablemates in the 2nd/3rd days! they also all sold out of almost all their stuff!! so on the last day last few hours of the fair I had the whole table to myself haha v nice

That meant we had a lotta reorganizing of our table throughout the fair; kinda fun we had a v dynamic table it twas changing forms throughout the day ~

to talk ~businessy~ for a sec: For a 3 day event, I didn't earn that much more than I did at Raincity comic con which is Very interesting insight to me.. My two main theories are that 1. my books stood out much more as different/unique at the majority illustration/prints being sold at raincity, and 2. (which was the opinion of our table neighbour who has been doing this for longer) that multi-day events don't sell as well per day as 1-day events do as there's less feeling of urgency? they said that lotta ppl were like 'i'll come back tmr!' n then most don't haha fair enough