Moonshine Bindery

A charity bind for @dr-girlfriend, and coincidentally a fic I adore, which is a lovely bit of fortuitousness.

Finished on the 20th of October, according to my binding journal, but only reached the lovely Dr. G today! I was so delighted when she reached out and asked if I would consider binding a copy of this fic for her — it’s a longtime favourite of mine, and it was a fun work to typeset. I wanted to lean into the setting as far as I could without tipping over into outright cheesiness, and while I don’t know that I fully succeeded, it was fun to try.

The foiling on this was a pain, mostly because I wasn’t very clever how I went about it - the sheets of heat-transfer foil I was using weren’t big enough to cover the whole design, and I when I tried to use the cricut, it didn’t take where I used tape to cover the join in strips of foil. Stencil vinyl, my beloved for foiling, also didn’t work as the design was too big to place on the foil without buckling.

I ended up cutting templates out of sticker card and using those on top of the foil, and used a heated pen tool into the crevices of the stencil. It’s still not 100% but it’s better than previous attempts.

My favourite thing is probably the endpapers — the gold touches in them are really shimmery in person, if not in photos. I also used it to line the slipcase I made, which was a last-minute addition made when I was panicking that the cover was a little too floppy for this book. (The cover ended up firming up compin the press, and the case apparently got a little damaged in transport and is protecting nothing 😅, but I still think it’s a fun touch.)

A tiny copy of Tell my lungs to keep on breathing, bound for @theoldastronomer because I was in a flurry of tiny-book-binding and wanted to give a little gift as a thank you for cheerreading the story that would eventually become Book No. 32.

I did offer to bind one of her own fics (you should go and read one immediately, they are astonishingly good), but she asked for this, which meant I got to discover a new fic and have a lot of fun with the typeset.

I found some fun-but-moody floral skeleton motifs which felt right for the visceral immediacy of the fic. (Next time, I’ll be cleverer about placing art that crosses a spread over the centre of a signature, but even though I was kind of winging it this time, I think it came out ok.)

Another wee book for Wisteria_daydreams, this time a fic I wrote for her birthday this year. Again this was a fully paper-bound copy, with an HTV title. I need to start a list of fonts that behave at this scale; this one came out well but didn’t love being heated. I was pleased to find a scrap of this purple paper left over from another bind, as well as the purple, glittery HTV, as that’s the giftee’s favourite colour.

I also made myself a tiny copy, but the papers are reversed on mind (white cover/purple spine).

A tiny book. Two copies made, one for @wisteria-daydreamer and one for me. 27 Minutes is a lovely little fic she wrote for my birthday last year, so it seemed fitting to gift back a tiny copy for her birthday this year.

I’ve been experimenting with jazzing up my tiny typesets; it’s hard to add too much detail at such a small scale, but I was pleased with this hourglass motif that hints at the importance of the title’s length of time.

À tête-bêche binding of can’t start a fire without a spark by veryrach (that’s me) and this gun’s for hire by @bittercape, a fic and its sequel that demanded being bound together. They’re also bound as tiny books because bits expressed a desire to put one in their mouth - I don’t know if this has yet been attempted.

I bound two copies of this typeset, one for me and one for bits. Their copy is bound in the leftover paper I had from the endpapers of another fic of theirs I bound a few months ago. I like the geometric pattern and the colour scheme, but I wish I’d figured out better titling; the red is nice and shiny but the cutout didn’t come out as I’d hoped.

My own copy is bound in a plain black cloth cover with silver writing, but I may redo that as I feel it wants something a little more visually interesting; we’ll see.

I also made a little slipcase for bittercape’s copy, because I have been wanting to try and make one for ages, and this little book wanted protecting in the post. I designed the case in Affinity Photo and cut it on the Cricut - I didn’t work out the measurements as precisely as I would have liked, but it was *just* close not to need redoing, I think. There’s a smidge too much wiggle room, but it’s functional:

Friends! I will be participating in the Marvel/DC Crossovers Pool Noodle event, running from mid-May through the end of June. My current plan is to bind six tiny books, one for each week of the event, and handily the event’s weeks are organised by theme! Six themes, six weeks, six books… see where I’m going with this?

Not only do I want to make tiny books, I want to give them to people who love these rare pair fics as much as I do, so I’m opening nominations. You can nominate your own fic, or someone else’s (but please read the info at the end of the post if you’re nominating someone else’s fic); I’ll pick the fic I think best fits each week’s theme and bind a copy for myself, one for the nominator, and one for the author if they’re a third party. Hopefully that all makes sense!

The Rules

Nominated fic must fit the event definition of a pool noodle AND be under 10k. Between 2-6k is ideal but I can make other lengths work (😏)

If you’re not the author, you must have their permission for me to bind it (I will check, please have this in place before submitting)

They don’t have to be from the official list of ‘fic whose authors are chill with fanworks’ but that’s probably not a bad place to start (this will go up on the Crossovers Server blog here, so keep an eye on that for more info)

I will make a copy for you and for the author if they want one (therefore please also check if they’re okay giving me their mailing address as I will need it for postage reasons). Also you will need somewhere I can post your copy

This is all 100%, but if you want to contribute to shipping costs I won’t turn you down

I think that’s everything, but please feel free to reach out with any questions, etc.

I bound my first tiny book last week, a very small copy of Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by @tsttoain, and I am a convert. I love the cute size, I love that fucking up only costs one (1) sheet of A4, and I love turning a project around in a single evening. Seriously. 4-5 hours, including typesetting, and that’s with me pausing to figure out each set as I went. Amazing. It is a *revelation.*

Not only was this my first tiny book, this was also the author’s first foray into this ship and into writing smut; I really like the symmetry of trying something new in my binding when she was trying something new in her writing. I bound two copies, one for the author and one to keep.

I am always grateful to the @renegadepub discord community for their support, but they really came through this time as I gave myself a crash course in tiny typesetting and binding and turned this around in just a few hours.

With the exception of the pages, both copies are made entirely of scraps from previous projects, and I am delighted at how they’re both a new and complete object in their own right, and simultaneously one that carries with it the ghosts of other books books I’ve bound to date.

Ages ago now, @kangofu-cb reached out about having a copy of A Heart Worth Loving bound, and I was so excited to work on this for her. So excited that I sent it off with taking any photos of the finished book, in fact, and had to sheepishly ask for some after it arrived. Luckily she was super accommodating, ty lovely! (If you haven’t read the fic, check it out, it’s really beautiful.)

The wonderful @there-must-be-a-lock is running a fanworks-of-fanworks event right now, and I was lucky enough for @kangofu-cb to let me bind her fic Third Wheel as my entry. This is the fic that got me shipping Winterhawkhood, and I'm just inordinantly fond of it, so I was delighted to get a chance to play with it for a moment.

A tête-bêche quarto of two Hannibal fics by emungere, bound for @springkitten, which were exactly the right length to make this a satisfyingly chunky little book to hold.

I have to confess I'm only passing familiar with Hannibal, so I had to take a wild stab at the vibes (as Hannibal does at people, perhaps?), but they assure me that these were acceptable.

Book No. 11

A fic-specific reading journal, with a typeset adapted from Battenkill Rose Bindery’s bookbinding register. I particularly like the index detail, as well as the late-18th century feel of the title page.

Book No. 10

À tête-bêche quarto for LovelyFanficWriter (@firstkanaphans)’s gorgeous pair of Eclipse fics about Akk and Aye finding themselves in uni. They’re told from differing perspectives and feature some of my favourite tropes, including miscommunication that wouldn’t be a problem if they weren’t quite so incredibly blockheaded.

I’m particularly fond of the endpapers, a sort of lustre-y, shimmery marbled effect whose colours I completely failed to capture here.

I left the fore edge untrimmed and only cut the pages as needed for the quarto folding; I feel like at this size it doesn’t hinder readability, and I knew I wasn’t doing to need a sanded fore edge for painting or gilding, so I decided not to take my chances with trimming. Also, I still have the scar on my finger from the last time I tried to chisel a text block, so.