Infinite Diversity, Infinite Combinations

This is, far and away, the most involved bind I've done so far. That means that I have way more to say about it than I usually do, and I also have a few progress pictures (which is rare for me). So, if y'all will indulge me a little:

Typeset

The typeset was pretty standard fair, complete with my ongoing love affair with running footers. I also had a little bit of fun with footnotes on the copyright page.

Finding a good titling font was... involved. I didn't want to just use The Lord Of The Rings Font (TM), and only a few of the LOTR-inspired fonts I found did anything for me. And then, as an additional complicating factor, I had chosen to set the parenthetical portions of the chapter titles as subtitles, and let me tell you: LOTR-inspired fonts have got descenders for days. They are about 60% descenders by volume, which simply doesn't play nicely with subtitles. Got a very lucky break when a fellow binder suggested checking out uncial fonts, and eventually landed on one I really liked. I also broke my own personal rule about not using a different cap for titling vs drop caps, but I wanted something more decorative, and I found a nice uncial style illustrated drop cap that still matched pretty well.

The other design complication for title page and, more importantly, the cover, was the damn Tengwar. Now, I would absolutely describe myself as a nerd. I simply play too many table top games for that to not be true. But what I've never been is a language nerd. The first step (getting the Tengwar transcription) wasn't so hard. I used Tecendil for all of it (and if there are any transcription errors, well... I did my best). But trying to 1) find a Tengwar font that plays nicely with Affinity Publisher and 2) learn how to type correctly in that Tengwar font was.... God. That was a week long endeavor. As it turns out, there is one (1) Tengwar font that Affinity Publisher can render correctly, and that font is Alcarin Tengwar. I'm not going explain why because this post is already going to be long enough as is, but I will at least save the rest of you the trouble of the trial and error that took me.

Covers

For the cover design, I had a pretty strong idea of what I wanted to do from the beginning, although I did try one alternate version. As usual, all the design work was done in Affinity Designer. (This one also definitely tested my ability to work with my own vectors vs just using other people's vectors.) Regardless, I knew that I wanted to incorporate the idea of "unspooling" or "unraveling." This is a timeloop fix it fic, and I wanted to get that feeling of the new story overwriting the tragedy of the old.

With the importance of Maedhros being able to save Fingon within the story, I keyed in on the moment in The Silmarillion where he dies and foiled those lines in silver:

At last Fingon stood alone with his guard dead about him; and he fought with Gothmog, until another Balrog came behind and cast a thong of fire about him. Thus fell the High King of the Noldor, and his banner, blue and silver, they trod into the mire of his blood.

Now, the moment I pulled from A Thread Unraveled isn't exactly the same moment, but it is the moment in the fic where I think Fingon is saved for good within the loops:

He deserves to live. He is valiant, and good, and I know that he deserves more than death as his reward. He deserves everything I can give him and more, and he doesn't end here. He cannot end here. Please. See us. See what we have become. I know I have done wrong. I know there is so much I can never make right. I know it. But I am trying. I love him, and I am trying. He loves me, and so I am trying. Is it enough? If you are listening, if you can hear me, please. Have mercy for the Eldar and their love. In the darkness of his mind he sees silver, and blue. The stars as they first emerge in the dusk sky. As Grond reaches the highest point of the swing, Fingon so small on the ground beneath him, Thorondor appears out of the breaking clouds and dives for Morgoth’s face.

And besides, "Have mercy for the Eldar and their love" is a line that really stuck with me after reading the fic. This section is what I foiled onto the cover in gold. High concept design? A bit. But I gotta have fun somehow.

The actual covers were foiled using my Silhouette and a fine tip WRMK foil pen. I messed up two transfers over the course of making three books, but I didn't run out of foil OR bookcloth, so [through gritted teeth] that's fine.

The Text Block

Ah, the text block. Now this is where we started to get a bit fancy with it. After the usual round of glue, rounding, and backing, I started experimenting with some edge decoration techniques. One of my guiding design principles for this bind was the idea of light: this is a story that's preoccupied with finding the light in the darkness in both a philosophical sense and in the very physical "finding a Silmaril" sense. So I had in my head this image of sort of iridescent blue edges. The problem was getting there.

I settled on acrylic inks for my color, mostly because I was scared of accidentally gluing a text block closed with acrylic paint. In general, I have actually really liked working with inks. My method still needs some refinement to eliminate the tendency for inks feather a little into the pages, but they produce incredibly vibrant colors. That said, at least at my local craft store, there weren't any blue metallic inks. And even if there were, that's glittery, not necessarily iridescent. To get myself the rest of the way there, I started playing around with a colorshift acrylic glaze.

IF YOU'D LIKE TO SEE PROGRESS PICTURES FOR THE COLORSHIFT GLAZE, PLEASE CLICK ON THIS IMGUR LINK. TUMBLR KEEPS FLAGGING THESE IMAGES AS EXPLICIT FOR REASONS THAT ARE ABSOLUTELY BEYOND ME.

Now this is a really interesting material that I'm looking forward to experimenting with more. The pictures above are from my test block with the glaze layered over black ink. With all of the edges, I watered the glaze down with some distilled water (mostly due to the aforementioned terror of gluing my text block closed—I still took the block out of the press and fanned it immediately after application). I was reasonably happy with the results, but the problem I consistently ran into is that if you just look at the edges dead on, you don't really get the effect. The light has to hit them just right. (It also makes these edges a pain to try to photograph.) Additionally, this glaze sheds glitter like a motherfucker. I contained the glitter with a coat of watered down acrylic medium, but my success rate with that was variable. Some of the edges turned out great, some of them got a bit cloudy. That might be my stupid glossy acrylic medium at play again, or maybe something else entirely. More experimentation needed.

At any rate, some of them turned out better than others. This is one of the actual text blocks, with the glaze layered over a prussian blue acrylic ink. On the whole, I'm happy with the results, they just aren't quite as eyecatching as I was hoping.

The last new technique I tried out on this bind was handsewn endbands. I've had the materials for a while, but actually figuring out the process intimdiated me for a while, so I'd been putting it off. Turns out that they're actually not too hard to do!

These are faux double core endbands sewn with two strands of embroidery floss held together over a leather core. Lots of little mistakes, especially on my personal copy (which I did first... so that I could make all of my mistakes on it), but very happy with the results.

It's an A4 octavo and 416 pages, so small but chunky! I decided to attempt backing on this one because there was quite a bit of swell on the spine.

Endpapers are printed lokta from shepherds in London, and the cover is dubletta mustard. The design is printed using my inkjet printer. The endbands are hand sewn faux double core, using embroidery floss.

These books are octavo size, meaning that each book is approximately one-eight of a sheet of letter sized paper. It's been a while since I last made a tiny book, and I forgot how much I love working with them (and how comical they can look sometimes, especially when chunky 😂 one of them is about an inch and a half thick)

[ID: Two progress photos of a hand-bound book. In the first, the sewn textblock is stood on its end and fanned out to show how much throwup it has. In the second, the unsewn textblock is held in a hand to show how thick it is proportional to its page size, which is rather thick. /End ID]

This was also my first time making a box! I knew I wanted these books to be a boxed set, so I used DAS's slipcase videos to construct a covered box for them. It ended up being easier than I expected it to be, and I'm really happy with how they turned out! The marbled paper on the inside of the slipcase was done by me, and I was happy to finally have a good project to use some of these papers for.

[ID: A progress photo of two slipcases for a series of three handbound books. Both slipcases are uncovered and only have four sides, missing the tops. One has three books stacked inside it, checking the fit. The other is open to display the blue and purple marbled paper inside it. /End ID]

I'm eminently grateful for the extended timeline this year because these books took a long time. I definitely underestimated how much time it would take to construct six separate books and two boxes, even if those books were smaller than normal folio sized books. (In fact, them being small added extra time, as the printed sheets needed to be cut apart before I could begin assembling the textblocks.) I did most of the physical construction after coming back from the holidays, which also coincided with my headlong tumble into Heated Rivalry 😂 it became my background noise while binding, as well as my grasp on the passage of time. Turns out, six books plus two boxes takes about fifteen Heated Rivalries to complete 🏒

[ID: A progress shot of six hand-bound books, which are in the middle of being chisel trimmed. In the background, a laptop shows the end credits of Heated Rivalry. /End ID]