This really started over a year ago, with a project started in the Renegade Bindery server: people would format different chapters of My Immortal, without knowing what anyone else was doing, and we would put them together into one file. It was agreed upon that everybody would disregard both good design and good taste.
(If you click on each image, the caption lists who designed the page in question. I couldn’t include them all here, but every page is basically a work of art. Horrible, typographically hellish art.)
After raiding a Joann’s of materials I thought belonged in Hot Topic circa 2005 (before it just became Think Geek II: We Don’t Light Our Store,) I almost immediately tested positive for covid. So I made most of this over the last four days, and with varying levels of coherent thought and common sense. The process is documented in a thread here
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I saw this on Bluesky and I need to convey to you all that I am salivating with my jaw on the floor at a printer
I'm not finding good GIFs right now but you know those scenes in movies or TV shows where someone cool or sexy or glamorous walks into the room and the characters stop talking and just stare?
Imagine me twirling my hair around my finger with a buffering symbol over my head at this thing:
On my list of fics to bind, Maybe Tomorrow was the one I saw the most clearly in my head before I started. I had an idea in my mind immediately - knew what I wanted the cover to look like, knew the chapter headers - the vision for this bitch was so clear the entire time I was working on it.
The fic is a an Annie retelling. I wanted the cover to combined a playbill vibe - pulling the city scape from some of the covers - and the Gatsby vibe. The Empire state building was my main inspiration - it combines those two thing brilliantly.
I could not find a skyline of New York that I like. So I made one. This cover is built out of MANY small squares that are masked behind other squares. There are…so many individual paces of this cover. It took me WAY to long, but I this was one of those times where I knew exactly what I wanted this to look like, and I did it.
Ok, let me nerd out for a second. Specifically I wanted the sun burst on the front - and on the top of the spine - here to look like some of the old art deco elevators floor indicators. The hollow gold really fucking pulls the whole cover together. The Broadway font, the hollow gold vinyl - honestly, this was my favorite cover. It's the most themed, that's for sure - and also the most detailed.
End pages are that lovely art deco arch. Commit to the bit. Can tell that the binding tape is a little thick/the end paper is a little to thin - so you can see them ghosting just slightly. Still, the shiny gold fans were fucking perfect.
Ok, moving on. The typeset for this chunky boy is also lovely. Every chapter has different top header frames. The Broadway style font for the headers and the drop caps are all gold.
This was my first try imbedding images into the chapters as well, relating them to whatever is going on in the fic.
Including the shot of my splash page too. I've started to define this a lot more now, but this was the first time I think I detailed this page this much.
This is one of my fucking favorite fics. I love everything about it - the plot, the character writing, the mood. Scifigrl47 was the first writer I tripped over on my way into the Steve/Tony fandom….fucking, what? Ten years ago? It's a pleasure to read their fics, always, and I'm ecstatic to have it on my shelf now.
If you somehow haven't read this fic, you're welcome.
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.
Printed on legal paper, font is Uni Neue(body text), Gearus (titles, headers, cover text), and Typographer Caps (drop caps). Images are composited from standard star wars and kraken/cthulhu conography, which is duplicated on the covers (with nearly invisible black squiddies underlying the flashy star wars logos, love how subtle they came out). Typeset in Affinity. Covers in black fairly low grade cow leather with HTV, endpapers printed from an image found in rawpixel's public domain archive, and headbands sewn on. Specifically made the bookmark ribbon long enough to run through the book twice, to potentially mark places in both fics at once.
There are people who want to live forever, and then there is Shinichi, who just wants to live a little longer than this.
this bind has been in my head since i first read the fic like, three years ago. i dreamed up so many ideas for it, for so long, and now it's finally done! the typeset was actually done in early 2022, back when i was still using google docs, but it went through a few iterations because i was just. so. fiddly. with every aspect of this book. it needed to be perfect (as close to perfect as i, an amateur bookbinder out of my depth, can get) and it had to be absolutely over the top, to reflect the insane amount of love and care that the author put into the fic itself.
the first time i read this fic, i barely knew what detective conan was, much less all of the intricate plot details; i was just along for the ride, but by the end i was completely invested. i went back and watched through the anime as well as a few movies (it took me six months) and then read the fic again. and then a few more times. kaishin and the world of dcmk has utterly gripped me. it's 100% this fic's fault and i love it so, so, much.
i went through a few iterations of visual designs and i'm really happy with the little details i managed to squeeze in.
the entire color scheme is based around red, because 1) it's a murder mystery, 2) for scarlette shinamoto (and the title of the fic as well as the original holmes novel it references), and 3) the irony of "lady red" actually being red. the secret fourth reason is that i think red/gold is a super sexy color combo.
i sewed the textblock with red thread to reference holmes' "scarlet thread of murder".
another detail i love is the five yen coin bookmark, it was one of my first ideas and it turned out even better than i thought.
i wanted the endpapers to evoke a sense of the white marbled floor of the ballroom, with the glow-in-the-dark kaitou kid caricature being the luminol on the floor, and the little pops of red looks like blood that's been mixed in. i lucked out in that the other side of the endpaper was like a lavender-purpley color, i like to think of it as a little wink wink nudge to the color of the actual Lady Red.
the chapter pages got a few reworkings, but i'm happy with the illustrations i ended up doing for each of them. the chapter titles are one of my favorite things about the fic, each one has so much meaning packed into it and flows so beautifully, and i wanted to put as much care into making them pop as possible.
the cover was a linocut carving i designed and carved, which i then printed onto the bookcloth, and ironed on htv on top.
i also threw in a couple of my drawings of my favorite scenes.
this is getting way too long, so i'll end it here. i'll have a separate post detailing the process every step of the way, if anyone wants to take a closer look. this fic is kind of directly responsible for getting me into fanbinding, so it's safe to say it altered the course of my life. i now spend way too much time (and money) looking at book stuff.
kittebasu, if, somehow, you see this and would like an author copy, i would be honored to make one and ship it to you; i would be overjoyed to gift you with any art i have the ability to make, because the fics you wrote have irreversibly altered my brain chemistry, and being able to give back in any capacity would be a dream. (thank you.)
a few postscripts:
i am not selling any copies of this fic. partially because i believe in the gift economy of fandom as well as firmly keeping fanbinding a hobby that will stay unmonetized, but also because it took me months (years, if we are counting when i first finished the typeset) to finish this and i do not have the strength.
however, if you are also a fan of this fic and would like a copy, i honestly, fervently, encourage you to give fanbinding a try! renegade publishing and its discord server are an absolutely wonderful and free resource. i knew nothing about bookbinding and had zero materials when i first started, but i've learned so much thanks to the lovely people there. if you're still apprehensive about getting started, i'd be willing to share my typeset of this fic as well as answer any questions about the making of this book if you DM me.
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My first REALLY tiny book, a bind of Four of Swords. A sextodecimo! This lil guy is about 3" x 2 1/4" and is bound with actual cards from the miniature edition RWS deck. Because of the fun tarot imagery I'd been wanting to bind this one, but it's so short, just about 5000 words, so it had to go really little :3
Printed on pop-tone white from French, spine and sword detail done with HTV. I printed the main narrative in black and the flashbacks in blue, for visual separation, and the endpapers are of artwork done for this fic by the incredible @sandwichartistdatzu !!
I printed and bound all of the fiction on the Mechanisms’ website!
[IDs in alt text]
Book pictured here with Algernon
Process images and notes under the cut!
I forgot to take photos for. A good amount of the steps. But here’s the signatures half-sewn together. I ended up having to print every 12 pages individually to get the formatting to work, but it was worth it!
Here’s the text block all sewn together. I used dental floss, since it’s cheaper and thinner than the waxed thread I have access to, and if it’s good enough for ballet shoes it’s probably good enough for binding.
This is what it looked like after hacking at it with an x-acto knife for two hours. This was to trim it and theoretically smooth the edges of the pages, but I don’t think I’m there yet.
Here’s what it looked like after I glued the spine and let it dry. Again, I spared every possible expense, so this is regular elmer’s glue rather than PVA glue.
Here’s the cover half-prepared. I used this tutorial (video) to make book cloth with tissue paper and a fat quarter, and glued it to cardboard I had lying around.
Ignore the crown pattern on the paper; it’s what was on the backside of what I used for the endpages and spine. Here it is (almost!) ready to be glued together!
Aaand here’s it actually being glued together. I don’t have a book press or much counter space, so I used heavy books and a lap desk. It opens a little wonky and has some other quirks, but overall I’m pretty happy with how it came out, especially since it was my first time using a lot of these techniques! Next time I’m definitely not going to use paper for the headbands, since one of them popped off when the spine flexed, but c’est la vie.
