#daniel bryan

See...CHECK! What happened to the last person that broke into my house?!

-- comment I read on YouTube

──────── · · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · · ────────

I bound a bunch of Bryan Danielson’s promos

──────── · · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · · ────────

──────── · · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · · ────────

So I completely underestimated how many promos this man has done. I thought this was going to be one of those mini-books I do (which is why I call them pocket promos, usually they fit in your pocket). Yeah. No. It took me a week to watch all the promos and go over each transcript to make sure there are no mistakes. 1/3 of the way through I noticed that my page count was approaching 300 pages. Normally these miniatures are between 150-200 pages. And I wasn’t even halfway through. So. I panicked. I changed the entire plan to make this a normal sized book. Which turned out great I think. 2013 was a crazy time, the fed had this man reciting Shakespearean monologues every week. I also decided that I wanted Bryan Danielson’s lines to all be red. Just because I thought it would be fun.

──────── · · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · · ────────

──────── · · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · · ────────

I really wanted to lean into the dragon aesthetic so I thought I’d look at illuminated manuscripts for inspiration. I really loved this page I found on so I added some (probably incorrect) Latin basically saying "The American Dragon is better than you and you're going to get your head kicked in. Yes. Yes. Yes."

──────── · · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · · ────────

──────── · · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · · ────────

I used 2.5mm cardboard for the 2 spines, front and back, and 1mm cardboard for the wing. I cut out the wing two times and then cut the dragon’s wing-bone-things (metacarpals I think) out of one them. Then I glued that together so it’s about 2mm thick. I wanted this book to have a magnetic closure so I bought some tiny magnets and cut holes into the cardboard. I was so scared of getting this wrong I measured it 5 separate times before glueing everything in place.

──────── · · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · · ────────

──────── · · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · · ────────

I found this faux leather online and I wanna just say that this is not proper book cloth and while I’m happy with how it looks it was an absolute nightmare to work with. I’d been debating spending a lot more for the faux leather textured book cloth from the store that I usually order at but it was so expensive that I decided against it. Should’ve just gotten the more expensive one. Ngl. But alas. It still looks great I think. I used some clothespins to keep the leather in place while the glue dried and that was an absolute lifesaver, but that wing. THAT WING. I really just have to make life harder for myself, don’t I? That wing was horrible. Just horrible. If I thought formatting the title pages for each of the promos was headache inducing, this was full on psychological warfare. I have no idea what I was thinking when I drew up the design for this. Looks great. I’m super happy with it. But never again. NEVER. AGAIN.

──────── · · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · · ────────