Fanbinding: I've Got Nothing to do Today But Smile by gyzym
Project 52, Bind 71, Binderary Book #12/end
I’ve Got Nothing to Do Today But Smile by gyzym
Completed: February 27, 2026
Size: Octavo. 19,867 words, 179 pages.
A classic Inception AU where Arthur is a stressed out corporate lawyer and Eames owns the coffee shop across the street from his office.
This bind was a bit of a disaster once I started printing and assembling. The first issue I noticed was in the trimming - I don’t know what I did but there wasn’t a right angle on the textblock once I was finished. I don’t have access to a guillotine at home and I didn’t have the time to go back out and try again (and probably didn’t have the margins to work with either) so I decided to see what I could accomplish with a straight edge and blade. The results are serviceable but not terribly attractive. It at least allowed me to avoid making a trapezoidal cover.
When it came time to make the cover I discovered another error. I was making this at the same time as another octavo, and somehow had switched the endpapers I intended for each book. It wasn’t the end of the world (at least they both matched) but the whole look turned out a bit more aggressive than I was planning. The unexpected hazards of working on a Coffee Shop AU and a story about serial killers at the same time.
For all the issues on the outside of the book, the typeset for this text came out really well. Times New Roman for the body text, which gets a bad rap for being very basic but excels at fitting a lot of text into a small space. Grenzel for the title, which is another very versatile, not-at-all flashy font.  It picked up some toner haze in the printing process, which means it's probably time for a replacement cartridge.
I may remake this again in the future to try to fix some mistakes, but it will do for now.
