pleasantboat press

The Small Matter of Divinity by @coffeetailor /coffeetailor

The story was done. Binghe and Shen-bro were off on their honeymoon, Mobei-Jun was finally the actual king of the Northern Desert, they'd had their big fight and actually made some progress, and Shang Qinghua had even been allowed back into the sect. So happily ever after, right? At least, if survival and paperwork counted as happy. Then what was this shit?! Being in some rip-off 'Honey I shrunk the Cultivator' fanfiction wasn't part of the deal! In other words, Shang Qinghua, the great master Airplane Shooting Into the Sky, overworked and underappreciated god of this universe, accidentally accepts an optional quest with no cancel option and ends up even shorter than usual. Wasn't his life dangerous enough as it was?

title/drop caps: Gyahegi chapter numbers: Agatho system messages: Montserrat chapter titles/body text/headers/page numbers: Coelacanth

151,889 words | 414 pages

I made this copy as a gift for my friend @kaleidoscope-draws for a little gift exchange last year as she made me some BEAUTIFUL ART!!! PAINTED ON A CANVAS. I might just expire. Thank you friend for always being eager to chat about svsss, I appreciate you a WHOLE BUNCH. This copy is a bit different to the copy I made for @coffeetailor that FINALLY ARRIVED!! Woohoo! I hope you enjoy your book, coffee <3

This was my first set of silk endbands after buying the Entire tire silk collection from Japan. I think this means I can sew endbands for the next 100 years. I had some fun using minimal colours for this bind as I wanted the Wintry mountains piece by Gong Xian to shine as the chapter headers art. Plus I really love a cheeky peek of colour used in a bind lol.

A post-WW2, mermaid!Cody AU, and featuring art by @shukruut on the dust jacket and for each of the title pages which is absolutely stunning!

For this bind I finally got to pull out *two* of my marbled papers from izumin marbling, the stone wave pattern on the front and the bright marble on the inside for the endpapers, paired with duo oatmeal bookcloth. I pulled colors from the endpapers into the french double core endbands as well. Edges painted in "cloisonne orange."

for each of the three parts in this bind, I used a @shukruut artwork, and pulled a color from that art to set the chapter headers and one of the sea-creature drawings in as an accent on the summary page.

(I also found a very silly little fish as a paragraph break ^)

the combo of script font (Trafton Script) and art-deco-ish font (Onyx) is directly inspired by a 1940s yearbook on the site Fonts In Use. The script + serif font combo was very popular for this time period. Nautical paragraph breaks, chapter headers, and summary page illustrations are from Heritage Library's free public domain collection.

plus full shots of the edge (I had to pull out the power sander for this book)

and a closer view of that gorgeous bright Cody artwork

AHH!! im so excited that this project is finally in the author's hands. it was my pleasure to bind @jaebirdpikeri's endlessly fun tsukasen fic craving to touch (with art by the extremely talented @north-sta). this was one of the first tsukasen fics i read in the fandom and ive been drafting (and re-drafting and re-re-drafting) designs since last summer--the author requested a celestial-themed bind and i had to deliver. im so pleased with the results :3

this bind has been in development hell for some time, but I've decided it's met my proof of concept so here it is!

for this bind i used a lovely typeset by @finalfrontierpublishing .

this is a three piece in-boards bradel, with a leather spine. cover is inlaid with a second bookcloth, and the edges/cracks were painted red oxide acrylic, then water gilded with brass leaf for the kintsugi effect (I painted so many layers, it was damn near the whole real lacquer process). I didn't get a perfect finish, but I'm happy enough with it! edges are black ink with a single line of gold that matches the gold thread in the endband; the gold line is also the point where the story switches from "breaking" to "repairs" which is also shown by the art change in nic's typeset. some people might recognize this double core gradient endband from my binderary class this year, as i used it to teach the class.

and then applied brass leaf (i was at a friend's apt that day and did not have my bamboo tweezers so... bamboo chopsticks)

the leather spine involved some paring practice

and also figuring out that my first attempt to gild the leather section was going to tarnish, scraping all that back off, and going over it again with the acrylic first, then the leaf, then sealing it with dosabiki.

Finished binding a positively delightful, smutty and devastating fic Praeteritum Memorias by smoace_shipper; it's been one on my list to bind for a while, and well pleased to have finally gotten around to it. The cover paper I actually had bought a few years ago, it was a matching pair of one white and one red swirls, and in seeing them immediately knew I wanted to use it for a smoker/ace fanfic; I actually cut with an x-acto knife the separate papers to form the interlocking of the fire/smoke, which can be seen below, with the fic information

i did a thing!!! fanbinding of @parkersgeorg's incredible scum villain fic, airplane view of the self, which is one of my favourite svsss fics (for good reason).

overall i'm pretty happy with how this turned out--the red endpapers are extremely vibrant IRL (and ties in with [spoiler] at the end!) and provide a nice contrast to the dark blue cover paper (moshang colours!). this is also the first time i've tried a ribbon bookmark and!! it works! i can indeed mark my pages!

the chapter headers were both fun and a beast to figure out--i used a stock image of pixels and then dragged it all the way to the end of the page, and then when i trimmed the pages before binding i cut off all the white space the printer left around it to make it look like it had printed right up to the edge :') the page dividers are willow leaves, as a play off of (spoiler) liu qingge's name.

and yes, i did go through and manually typeset every single time that the system talked (there are twelve fonts used in this typeset including the default text font, lol. thank you fontspace). i would also just like to clarify that in the digital version, all the pixels and system talk is a bright cyan:

Transmigrating into the stallion novel he hates most is bad enough, but why did it have to be into the body of one of the protagonist's wives? Shen Yuan spends exactly two months dealing with harem intrigues, sullen maids and his husband utterly ignoring him before he decides to go on an extended holiday. Very extended. Surely no one will care if he just forgets about being married and becomes a cultivator, right?

I made this book for @waterloggedowl for the @renegadeguild annual exchange! It was very fun getting to return to Scum Villain fandom for this! When I started fanbinding I was deep in danmei fandoms, but I've been off in Star Wars for the last few years.

I was blessed to be able to use the chapter art by @sunshine-dies . Their work is on the dust jacket, and I got to do a couple of fun spreads like these.

Beneath the dust jacket the book is bound in colibri bookcloth, with crepaldi marble paper inset for the fan and foiled with silver.

The same marbled paper is also the endpapers! I diverged from the standard SY color scheme here for two reasons: 1) sunshine-dies' art is in a lovely blue hue, and 2) Shen Yuan is never Shen Qingqiu in this fic, so a color change in the theme feels appropriate. The endbands are done in my asymmetrical style to match, and I painted the edge a polarized blue on black.

Back to the inside - since LBH is the emperor in this fic and inner court drama plays a large role, I created a vector pattern based on one of the wood lattice screen designs in the Forbidden City. More traditionally speaking this would be within a rectangular frame, but I kinda like the rough edges.

Whether you are new to the world of bookbinding, or an aged veteran, join us for a month of binding fun! This event is all about community and learning, be it trying something new or refining existing skills.

No Registration Required! Simply attend any or all of these workshops at your leisure.

All workshops will be hosted on Zoom. Zoom links will be provided in the Renegade Discord. A discord link is provided on the about page of our website.

Week One: Sunday Feb 1st - Saturday Feb 7th

Week Two: Sunday Feb 8th - Saturday Feb 14th

Week Three: Sunday Feb 15th - Saturday Feb 21st

Endbands of 2025!

Only five distinct ones this year, due to the move. But! I tried two new styles. I gave the chevron endband a go (bottom left) and also did a couple of true double cores (two on the bottom right). I think those ones turned out pretty well. I used a 0.5 mm plastic cord for the secondary core, which made it about the same size as the wrapped threads. I think it kept the end result from overwhelming the book.

hokay so. a while back I was thinking about how Turnabout’s Fair Prey is basically only still accessible because us sickos just keep passing around the direct link. and then I thought, I wonder if I could archive it physically? and then things, uh, got away from me.

This is an 84-page quarto letter (4¼" × 5½", trimmed to 4⅛" × 5¼") sewn boards binding. The cover is cut from cardstock & backed with silver lokta paper. I used spray adhesive because I was afraid to brush glue over all my fiddly little lines. The backing process worked great but the cut is a bit rough. I wouldn’t use a plotter to cut something this small and detailed from cardstock again, even with a 60° carbide blade. Next time: laser.

I adapted the Twine game format to the Choose Your Own Adventure format by just tagging all the links with page numbers. Links with expandable text moved to footnotes (sometimes nested footnotes). The body typeface is Warnock Caption and the display / superscript typeface is Titillium Web.

it is illustrated, because all good CYOAs are illustrated, and I did end up doing five even though I said I was going to stop at three. The full set can be seen here (not safe for work or tumblr).

98% of my involvement in the book arts is the sawbones rebinding I do for work, which mostly involves cursing the names of several major publishing imprints. it’s nice to do something where I have control over the structure for once!

...I made seven of them.

typesetting!!

@a-voltage files for u and anyone else who wants to print and bind your own

you can work up a text block for any construction, but for anyone newer to the handbinding game, these are the resources I find most helpful for the particular construction I used:

Sewn Boards Tutorial by lowmountain

Variations on the Drum Leaf and Sewn Boards Bindings by Karen Hanmer

The Sewn Boards Binding by Gary Frost

Sewn Board Binding Part 1 (Part 2, Part 3) by DAS Bookbinding

One warm day and the kids got an outfit change. They're ready for summer!

The low-cut shorts Sqh is wearing, that show off his lil belly button, ARE SO CUTE! AHHH I wanna eat him.

Also ft the tiny fanfic book my friend made me. It's perfect for a little light (smutty) reading.

(Close ups of smut book under cut cause its nsfw)

i respect that yoy give your little guys crocs, but in my heart of hearts, MBJ wears socks and sandals to the beach. I gave him high socks here but sandals were non-negotiable. I also took some creative liberties on the fit bc I could Not make it look good with the triangles. its very cute on the chibi tho.

One Elephant at a Time by fundlebundle

"The flame cast strange shadows on his face and made the Dark Mark dance on his pale skin. It had been ten years since he’d last seen Draco Malfoy."

It's hard to believe that I started working on the typeset for this bind in October of last year. Nearly eleven months later, I have finally managed to bring my vision to life.

This bind has a foiled cover and spine, hand sewn silk endbands, and edges that have been painted and gauffered. It also includes my first attempt at a hollow.

You can find more pictures and information about my process under the cut.

***this fic is an unfinished WIP on Ao3***