Silent Sun Press, bookbinding and more!

First, there's never a reason to get an HP Printer, unless you work at Staples and they're letting you get your employee discount on the heavily clearanced and fully functional display color laser printer so it costs like 100 bucks. Most of the other printer manufacturers would send over specifically marked "dummy printers" for display, but not HP. They just told us to open one and stick it on the shelf. HPs drivers and software are fussy and obnoxious, on top of just all the Evil they get up to.

So, what printer do you need? Depends on what kind of printing you do.

My general recommendation is whatever Brother chunky printer cube is current. Right now it's the 2420dw.

It's compact, it's efficient. It's typically $80 on sale. It's a laser printer, the toner it uses is waterproof (paper is not, but it won't bleed) and is already dry, so it can't "dry out". Set up is pretty simple.

It's great for document printing and shipping labels. Though if you're only printing shipping labels, a dedicated label printer is probably even better.

It's bad at color and images in general, because it's black and white and laser printers have relatively low ppi/dpi.

If you need color images sometimes then rather than get a printer, I recommend just taking it to a print shop. Their printers are way way better than yours, and it'll be cheaper than having to buy a new ink cartridge or four because your inkjet printer heads dried out again and it spent twenty pages worth of ink cleaning and clearing them.

If you are printing color all the time because you want to do it out of your house, or you like having physical pictures, or something. Canon and Epson inkjet printers are by Far the best print quality for consumer Grade printing of color images. The specific model you'll want will depend a bit on what you're printing. I'm fond of Epson's wide format printers for when I was playing D&D in person.

Decorative Sunday

We've made several posts about paste papers, but never one that explains the complete process and technique. This small accordion book (4"x4"; 10x10 cm), Making Paste Papers by noted American paper artist Diane Maurer (b, 1944), made at her home studio in Spring Mills, Pennsylvania with original paste-paper samples in 1992 signed by the artist, does just that. It offers simple, step-by-step instructions on how to make paste papers from mixing the paste to finishing the paper.

Maurer is noted for a variety of paper arts, but she writes, "Although I am known for my books and decorative papers, my focus for many years has been on creating paper collage. I begin my collages by marbling, paste painting, and dyeing paper to create the colors and textures that are essential to my artwork. Then I tear, cut and combine multiple layers of patterned papers with handmade papers to represent surrealistic landscapes and fanciful seascapes. Most have considerable dimension, approaching paper sculpture."

Recently, Maurer was invited to become part of the MET's Paper Legacy Project for which she handcrafted 40 papers, including traditional marbling, Japanese Suminagashi marbling, and paste papers.

Our copy of this book is another donation from the estate of our late friend Dennis Bayuzick.

View more of our posts on paste papers.

View more posts on decorative papers.

Hello everyone! I'm an illustrator, fanartist and also graphic design major currently finishing my degree. I'm in the process of writing my BA thesis about binding fanfiction and I'm gathering information about the practice via a form that has open-ended questions about the subject.

If you as bookbinder who binds fanfics would like to take part in my thesis research and anonymously fill out the form, here is a link to it.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdrUzmaAWZuJgihXQ82bqBKdNf23MCppcyLt2nlrBLpdrIwOA/viewform?usp=header

Your answers would be a big help! Also sharing this with someone who might be interested or reblogging would also be great.

The Courting Season by @anarchycox (The Witcher TV, 47k), casebound at folio size for @silentsunpress as part of the Renegard 2024 binder's exchange!

It's free, it's open-source, and it's better.

My first tête-bêche binding, my first octavo, and my first time working with leather. This is a combination of two Star Wars fics I've adored for years, and which I nearly always read as a pair, so this combo seemed really natural. The stories are 'Wonderterror' by Peradi and 'Luke Skywalker. 19. Full Human.' by Samvelg. They both explore the premise of the Skywalkers as Eldritch creatures as a result of Anakin's (lack of) parentage, and they are amazing. I made an effort to reach out to both these authors for permission but received no response; if either of them request that this post be taken down, I will of course do so. But as this is a personal book for my own collection that will not be sold or distributed, I felt that showing it off was fair.

I participated in the @renegadepublishing bound book exchange again and this is the book I made for Mick at Silent Sun Press (who I don’t believe has a tumblr).

The fic is a Crowley-centric gen fic so I chose Crowley colours (his black jacket with the red collar) and on the inside I used Japanese chiyogami paper with a tartan pattern that reminded me strongly of Aziraphale - because Aziraphale is always at Crowley’s core. I used the same paper for the headbands. The case is a modified Bradel constructed like a hardcover case and I cased in like a hardback, i.e. the spine of the case is not fixed to the spine of the textblock.