All my friend @maleekamolscreates had to ask was, "have you ever made a legal quarto version of Rookie Moves" and I was off to the races, creating yet another bind of this iconic fic.

I used Mally's own typeset as an inspiration, including the art @faiell had created back when a bunch of us did a big Twenty-Two Cards swap.

One fun thing about this bind was that I marbled my own end papers. Kinda. In Procreate. After I cut up the handmade paper for Mally's version, I realized I didn't have enough for two copies, but I also didn't have any other paper that would work well. And although I want to start marbling paper myself, and I even have all of the supplies, I just keep putting it off because it requires prep and also it's going to be messy and it takes time, etc, etc.

But then I realized, hey, I could probably replicate it in Procreate, and then I can match the colors perfectly! So that's what I did. I did not send the version with those papers to Mally because Mally makes the most gorgeous marbled papers and it would be an insult to send her digitally marbled paper. An insult to her craft.

My endbands are getting better, I think!

I used Skivertex (yet again, I love this stuff) for the cover, and the art was printed onto printable HTV and carefully cut out. The title is metallic HTV. I printed it on 28 lb paper to give it some extra chonk.

You may know my other fandom hobby is making podfics. I resisted listening to them for a little while (in retrospect it was probably like twenty minutes) but the first one I did listen to was Fifteen Hundred Miles, written by MoreHuman and read by Amanita_Fierce.

Not long after, I joined a Discord server with a bunch of other Schitt's Creek fans and said I would NOT be making podfics, I hated my voice, I mumbled too much, etc.

Obviously I changed my mind.

All this to say, I made Amanita a bind of Fifteen Hundred Miles as a thank you for making that pod that led to a hobby I love and a friendship!

I sure do wish I'd remembered to take good pictures before I sent it off! Dangit!

Size: Legal Quarto (and I barely had to fight with my printer to orient the pages correctly. Yay!

The cover material is Skivertex (a leather-like paper) which I hand-foiled. I've found Skivertex perfect for foil in the past, but for some reason this one wasn't as good. So it's a little, uh, rustic. But it's a fic about hiking! And in case it's not obvious, the squiggly line is the Pacific Crest Trail, which is what the fic is about.

I didn't want to hand foil the spine, so I used HTV on it instead. Perhaps I should have used HTV for the whole cover. TOO LATE NOW.

This fic has a lot of texting and messaging in various apps so it was fun to give them their own fonts. At least until I realized one of them didn’t print properly and of course I didn’t notice until I was folding signatures so I had to change the font and hope it didn’t affect any pages down the line. It’s a 100k work fic so I really didn’t want to have to reprint the whole thing! (It was fine, in the end.)

Oh look I speckled the edges! It's not as messy as I feared. I also played around with different spine title orientations. Because I am wild and crazy like that.

[Podfic] like summer when you start to speak by @pocket-lin (T, 8 minutes)

I was gifted this utterly lovely fic by the author for an exchange we did, and it's so soft and wonderful that I wanted to record it. So I did! I also sent Lin a tiny bound version of it.

This is one of those fics that I loved so much that I knew I was going to bind it as soon as I finished it. Especially since I'd recently created a typeset for Persuasion that I knew would work perfectly for this fic.

Some new techniques I used for this bind:

First time I did a cutout on the cover. I wanted to have it peek through the end papers but I just could not figure out how to do it. So I decided to mount the art on the backside of the cover and then hide it behind the endpapers.

First time I speckled the edges! It's not nearly as messy as I thought it'd be, but I do have an extreme aversion to the texture of toothbrush bristles, so I had to be a grown up and get over it, because it is the easiest way to do these.

The endpapers on my bind were made by my beautiful and lovely friend @maleekamolscreates, and the ones I used for Fluffy's bind are my beloved Ink Drops cardstock.

I used white HTV for the lettering on my copy, but silver on the author copy (which now I wish I'd used on mine, but no big deal.)

The gorgeous art was made by @substellaris, commissioned by @upon-poppyhills.

I bound this fic two years ago, and although I was happy with it at the time, I knew I could improve up on it. And this time I was not going to subject it to my guillotine.

(What started this project was pulling it off my shelf to read it and being unable to because of how crooked the trim job was. I just couldn't stop staring at the uneven margins.)

(I'm also amused that in my post for that bind, I commented on how happy with how square it turned out.)

Here's what I did:

Cleaned up the typeset (but didn't change it much)

Trimmed it using my plough

Sewed the endbands

Didn't use AI generated endpapers (look, it was two years ago, before I knew better)

Designed a more interesting cover (I actually made the background in Procreate. This is about the limit of my Procreate abilities.)

Printed the cover on canvas

Used gold HTV for the title/author on the cover

Bound: Running Mate by @kbrick

I bound this for an anonymous recipient for or the charity raffle over at the Pit. (Invite to the discord server, which is open to all Drarry fans.)

I'm quite proud of how this came out EXCEPT for one big dumb stupid mistake, but you know, like, that's what makes us human and that's what makes this book HAND-CRAFTED and ARTISANAL and not like MASS PRODUCED, right?!?

So. I designed it, printed it, folded it, punched it, sewed it, trimmed it, rounded it, backed it, lovingly sewed on the endbands and then I opened my press and WHAT IS THIS oh it's a signature. That belongs in the aforementioned printed, folded, punched, sewed, trimmed, rounded, backed, and endbanded text block.

So I punched it, trimmed it, and sewed it right into that text block where it belongs and can you tell?

Well, yes, a bit.

But otherwise it's PERFECT.

Cover is Skivertex, decorated with stencil and HTV.

Endpages are from Paper Source.

I'm honored that anyone actually put their tickets in my raffle, so I hope that anonymous likes this!

@sits-bound surprised me with an incredible little fan bind of my recent @hd-erised fic City of Light (gift for @mars-bar81). It’s so perfect! Look how shiny and sparkly the cover is! Look at the perfect font and the pink chapter headers! Look at the little Eiffel Tower page breaks!! Thank you so much, sweet friend. I will treasure this always.