#bookpics

(Monty Jay)

"They made some girls to frolic through flowers and others warm, sandy beaches.

But she was made to walk with the dead, to keep the rotting company."

"I would die for him.

I would kill for him.

I would bleed for him.

And that is a once-in-a-lifetime connection that is not easily matched by someone who is simply conventional."

"If the Halo comes for me, like they promised, I’ll take it as a compliment.

But her?

If they figure out what she is to me. If they come for her?

I’ll paint the town red."

"I’m the root of all evil"

"It was my father who made the silent boy, but she made the man."

"Four bastard sons who found comfort in each other’s chaos."

"The ghost and the boy who was winter."

Average rating: ⭐️ 3.5

This is the only hardback giveaway I've ever done and it was hard! Took me ages and ages so I thank Liz for her patience.

It all turned out great except for the ribbon, which was my own fault.

I'm a particular fan of the metallic vinyl on the cover, even though it gave me so much trouble.

Also every single one of the 500 pages stuck together because I tried to use a watered down glue to "set" some sparkly Micah powder. I had to separate them one by one.

Other than those hiccups though it's so pretty! Have a video to see the shimmer

Photo session for acernor's "Laid to Rest"

I actually decided the pastel store bought bookcloth looked a bit too plain and added metal corner pieces in gold. As mentioned, the end pages are hand-marbled by me and not the best, but it's important to me to try using the things I make even if they're not perfect.

The illustration is by @velinxi on twitter, used with permission for human_alias' typeset, which I had permission from both to print.

It was strange but fun using someone else's typeset; I don't usually do that, but this caught my eye. Especially the illustrations!

And we all know I'm a sucker for acernor fics.

This book is what converted me to the 50% pva/wheat starch paste church because I glued down the end pages with pva like usually and had to destroy it to adjust it. When mixing pva with paste, it takes longer to dry and you have more time to adjust. Highly recommend.

Although I love the gold corner pieces I've designed a cover art to do in gold vinyl. Usually I do the vinyl before casing the book in because it's easier (ironing a flat rectangle vs ironing a book) but that's how this turned out. Acernor liked the cover design I came up with so I'll be doing that soon.

May 23

My friend Marlena helped me out by playtesting a paperback collaboration set up. Basically I gave her a typesetting template with "replace this text with chapter one of your fic HERE" with very low brain power required to figure it out. Then she gave it back to me, I made sure everything was good and tweaked the formatting, and turned it into a book! (Several more steps than that but you get the gist)

After I printed it, I gave her the dimensions and she made a cover design. They can be as simple or complex as you like. Then I printed it, laminated folded etc and this book was the result!

It's a great model I hope to use in the future for giveaways. As you know, books take FOREVER to make, so anything that cuts down on the time requirement makes turnaround time a lot faster and allows me to do more.

This turned out gorgeous! The one struggle was the bottom cut, I couldn't get it square and kept trying to fix it. Eventually I had to stop because I was going to cut the text off if I cut again, but Marlena told me she doesn't mind the slim bottom margin that resulted.

This is also the first book where I used the thermal binder entirely! No gluing beforehand. It worked out great! I got a little glue spillage in my thermal binder but was able to get it out with minor hassle.

That machine also makes paperbacks go a lot faster so I'm happy to have it.

May 12

(Crossed-posted from Patreon)

I also have a video In the Lightbox but here's another one that most people won't get to see, my first look through the book before I even started reading it (the wear and tear of which did move things slightly, so it looks "better" here, ironically)

I would have included this video in the last post except Patreon hates having pictures and video in the same post. Enjoy!

April 2

(Crossed-posted from Patreon)

I haven't posted a bunch in March because things got horrifically suckish IRL for a bit! Hopefully over the majority of it now. The only real book I made in March was this volume 1 of "Embers" by Vathara for my husband. The spine didn't turn out as well as I'd like and I haven't added any cover vinyl yet, but the fic is perfectly readable!

(Except for an entire signature that mysteriously disappeared on me during sewing and I didn't realize it so there's a 30 page missing chunk. But a QR code to the fic itself to read that bit, almost makes up for it)

I'm currently sitting down to make up stickers and bookmarks for April, so those might come a bit earlier in the month than usual! Using actual pre made stickers makes it a lot easier so that's a great decision.

I ran into a picture limit here so I'll also make a separate post to talk about an upgrade to my lightbox situation!

These end pages are marbled pages by my friend Mai! They're an incredible artist

Feb 20th!

(Posting posts over from patreon)

I finished Rin's book! Now I can fully focus on one last project and use my extra time on the other gifts I owe. I definitely learned a valuable lesson about how many projects can be actively on my plate at any given time.

This is a quarto, gold and rose gold vinyl for the titling, of a fic that's actually in my bookmarks. It turned out so adorable and I love the sun motif throughout.

Enjoy the photoshoot!

Original: The darkest part of the forest

Género: Fantasía

Holly Black tiene un don para los entretejidos mágicos, ella no busca que los feéricos te agraden, sino que sean seres reales y eso de alguna manera funciona para que se ganen la atención de la audiencia.

No tiene personajes perfectos, todos tienen sus defectos como toda persona. Me encanta que ella no tenga miedo a profundizar en los rasgos egoístas de sus personajes, en sus deseos oscuros y en la dinámica de relaciones familiares. No hay relaciones perfectas entre hermanos, como es el caso de Hazel y Benjamin (los protagonistas), tienen altas y bajas pero eso solo agrega más capas a la personalidad de ambos.

No es una historia de amor, pero hay bastante de ello.

Siempre existe algo en el final que me hace esperar más, tal vez no sea problema de ella, sino mío. Aún así puedo decir que es un buen libro y vale la pena darle una oportunidad para nutrirte más con el mundo feérico que Holly creó.

GR: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5