#aviary bindery

I have been talking to people about this project for over a year, so I am overjoyed to announce that the illustrated edition of Salvage by @muffinlance is finally complete! Including 68 works of fanart for the story, this fic tried multiple times to crash my editing software (Microsoft Word, yes my suffering was of my own invention).

It was a lot of fun figuring out the paints for the page edges. A basecoat metallic black acrylic ink was topped with ReneeissanceColour's Novello color-shifting watercolor. The watercolor was stabilized with a clear acrylic so it wouldn't peel up when the stenciled gold detail was added (also in acrylic ink).

A giant shout out to the Microsoft Word wranglers at @renegadeguild. I would have lost my mind getting page numbers and text wraps to work properly without them!

Another day, another project! Sometime Yesterday by Esama/@esamastation was one of my first attempts at bookbinding years ago. Long, long ago, I learned Barnes & Noble will take whatever PDF you upload and give you a paperback book for a fee. I took ages considering doing this to fanfiction but always hit a wall when it came to the cover art. I never went the B&B route, but now that I'm binding my own books, I felt it was time to finally get back to making this book a reality.

Happy Fanfiction Writers Apprication Day! Every year, @renegadeguild hosts an event encouraging its members to bind fics and send them to their authors. This year I couldn't pick just one story and so tackled the challenge of binding 3 stories for 4 people! Of these were:

And Time is but a Paper Moon for Sami and @kisahawklin

'Til Our Compass Stands Still for @edenwolfie

Never Forget, Never Forgive for @artingstarvist

The King's Dancer by Nana8493, part 1 of The King's Omega series, including art by @ying-an-sanren and Anxxie

Firstly, a giant thank you to the author and artists for allowing me to bind this! I originally read this fic last year while on holiday and loved it! I came across the fic on wattpad and had no idea it was AO3 until I recently stumbled upon it by complete accident. AO3's formatting is much kinder to binders than wattpad, so I was overjoyed the chance to bind it was more accessible!

This bind was a lot of firsts - first time designing with Affinity, first time using stencils for page-edge decoration, and first time sewing my own headbands. While the headbands are a tad rough, I am overall very pleased with them and look forward to continuing to practice in the future!

Every year, @renegadeguild celebrates Fanfiction Writers' Appreciation Day by encouraging members to select a favorite author and offering to bind and send them one of their stories. This year, I wanted to send my appreciation to @redoftheturks (AKA go_ask_ash on AO3)! Not only are they a phenomenal writer, they have created hundreds of hours of podfic/audiobooks of fanfictions and danmei series, including Mo Dao Zu Shi (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation), Tian Guan Ci Fu (Heaven Official's Blessing), Quan Qiu (Thousand Autumns), and their current project , Canji Baojun De Zhangxin Yu Chong (The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish).

As most of their work is done for books that already exist in physical form, I wanted to bring their own stories to life. They created an amazing series of one-shot TGCF fics (Hualian Honeymoon Housetour & Simple Studies in the Divination of Desire) set post-cannon as a newly married Xie Lian and Hua Cheng learn to explore the vast possibilities a physical relationship can have.

In the second series, a set of little black books comes into play. I knew I wanted to base this project off this reference, but I wanted to make it more complex than a simple black cover. The collage of satin, leather, and lace was a lot of fun to work with and a delightful challenge! It was wonderful getting to collaborate with Ash on this project, going back and forth on the progress as I figured out font selections and design features.

I knew by the end of chapter 1 that this was going to be a binding project. To any TGCF fans - this is 100% a must read! @edenwolfie created a fantastic story with amazing characters. They're writing kept me thinking "one more chapter won't hurt' long into the night. For such a compelling story, I knew I was going to have to pull out all stops to manifest what I had envisioned for a physical bind.

I was so happy to see how much fanart has been done for this story! I knew I wanted to incorporate all of it, so time and care were put into matching art with scenes - everything is credited to their artists in the "publication" page (not shown because it's just a bunch of very tiny font with tags and the summary). For the chapter headings I chose to not have a word heading and instead just use an image of Ghost City (concept art from Bilibi). The typesetting was designed to look similar to the Seven Seas publications of TGCF.

Another thing I emulated from the TGCF publications was the glossary. I am so pleased with how this turned out! Edenwolfie made a fantastic character sheet to help people keep track of who's who and I wanted to make sure that effort was shown in the book. I added a few entries such as Hua Cheng and Xie Lian's - the additions are taken partly (or entirely) from the Seven Seas publications.

Edenwolfie's extra story A Paper Shield and a Wooden Sword and Communication Array is Down for Maintence, Try Again Later by Naamah_Beherit are also included in this work.

Finished my first quatro! Corrie Red by musicmillennia (@wreathedinscales) is an excellent fic for anyone who enjoys Clone Wars and Lovecraftian horror. I had a really fun time designing the cover on this one - trees and blood play a heavy role to the plot so I found a branch pattern I could cut up that also looked similar to veins. I discovered by accident a while back that if you don't let leather dye sit for 24+ hours before sealing, it will bleed into the sealant and give you a rust-like look. This time I tried to do it on purpose and it turned out pretty much exactly like I wanted! Could have bled a bit more, but I'm happy with the results.

Some folks have made some amazing fanart for this series, so I made sure to incorporate it when possible. What I couldn't match to scenes is in a gallery section.

Fonts used in this project include:

FStein (title and chapter headings)

Minion Pro (body)

R'lyehian (linebreaks - yes, it spells Corrie Red because I wasn't feeling inventive)

Courier New (medical logs later on in the story)

This was also a great project learning how printers translate different colors of black and white and what they do with that when printing. If anyone knows how to convince my printer it didn't need to give a very gentle highlight to the quotes at the beginning of each chapter, I would love to hear about it.

A Simple Thing by iridan (aka @ryehouses) - a project in bookbinding

Alright folks, I've been sending Hal updates on this since I started it and I am so happy to say that the AST books are finally done! This project put every beginner's skill I had in bookbinding to the test and for all its challenges I'm really happy with the final product.

But wait! Do you also want a printed copy of A Simple Thing? Do you want to be able to stare at the bound books on your shelf and bask in a feeling of accomplishment? Well now you can! Thanks to many hours of perfecting things and compiling stuff (and getting permission to post), there is now a folder of all the files you need to make your very own copies of A Simple Thing!

Both regular PDFs and complete typesets are included, as well as all the PNG files you would need to make exact replicas of my copies should you so chose. All information on sizing, materials used, signature size, and more can be found in the file labeled IMPORTANT INFORMATION - PLEASE READ (almost like it might have vital info).