#zero does crafts

Straight On Till Morning by @sineala

Fandom: Marvel (Comics)

Ship: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark

Start Date: 01/12/25

End Date: 03/30/26

Pages: 245

I've had SotM on my binding list since I first pulled the trigger and jumped into this hobby. I had an idea for what I wanted this bind to look like, and MTH2024 gave me the opportunity to do all the things I wanted to with it.

I...love this book. I love this entire bind - from the wild cover to the spine to the end papers to the chapter headers. The sparkly black book cloth. The color contrast on the cover. And the art. I especially fucking love the art. 

Gods this cover is so many lines. So many lines.

I wanted to wrap the book around the fic. I wanted the space themes, the trek font, the chapter breaks to all match the theme. 

Pulled it off, i think.

I will admit: I am not a Trekkie. I'm not typically a space gal, with the expectation - it seems - of any space fic related to Stony. I'll eat that shit all day and ask for more. But when it came to the slices of Star Trek lore that I wanted to add, I did the best research I could to get the vibe right. But there is SO MUCH of it, that I had to settle with doing the best I could to match the vibe as well as possible.

I treated this bind as the 'main' book bind for Marvel Trumps Hate 2024 winning bid - in that I wanted to go above and beyond with what I had originally proposed. So, I went on the hunt to get my hands on something I love more then anything to add to my fanbinds: I commissioned art.

@zappedbysnow fucking knocked it outa the park. I am, honestly, blown away at the art that she made. I picked out at one scene per chapter for her to draw, provided my (frankly lackluster) trek research, some (not well articulated) descriptions with some (really bad) rough sketches for the compositions of the illustration I wanted. Zapped took my brain dump and ran away with it.  

Special shout out to the Trekkies in the CapIM discord for the assist as well. Nether Zapped nor I are versed in Trek lore, so our collective research on the very specific outfits for this very specific time period were...not as good as we (read: I) originally thought they were. The lore-accurate check was wonderful - thanks for the help, ya'll! 

Thrust Issues (Rebind)

Never Too Late for Love

Postcards Anthology

Straight On Till Morning

For Marvel Trumps Hate 2024 (@marveltrumpshate), my winning bid went to a pod organized by the lovely @nostalgicatsea. The pod wanted to give a gift to the talented @sineala - who is one of the kindest, most dedicated, creative people I have every had the pleasure of interacting with. So many of her fics are on my top Stony to-bind list, and I am honored that I was given the free rein to do want I wanted for the binds.

So when the scope of what I was making for this kept expanding, I did nothing to stop it. I, in fact, kicked it into third gear and added more books (and art!) on to the project.

Your typesets are absolutely amazing it's crazy. If you don't mind me asking, what software do you use? You probably already answered it but i can't seem to find your answer. Again, your work is incredible!!!

I...may have said it a while ago, but i actually use Microsoft Word 😅

Specifically, i use Blak's Raw-Text Formating macro for word first, and then i modify everything based on the specific changes for the books i like to make. You can find it HERE. I have specific settings for drop caps and bleeds that are specalized for whatever I'm making - but Blak's base has been a LIFE SAVER.

I use Canva for all of my image creation and overlays. I pull hard images from places like Old Book Illistrations and Public Works by Cosmos for larger illistrations, or I scoot through Etsy to find print packages of older art. I have been spending a LOT of time making sure the images im using are not AI, and it's easier to do that with old illistrations then with the newer stuff.

1001 Fonts is the best place for fonts, but there are tons of spot to find fonts online. I do a lot of font reserch before I start - so most of the fonts I use are free.

I spent a while using InDesign for work - which is what I used for the Zine i was part of a few years ago - but i am not paying any money to Adobe. Do I have Affinity installed on my PC? Sure do. Have i made the jump over to actually use it? Not yet. I have binds that I need to get done for my MTH winners, but once those are done I'll actually start to try out other programs.

✅️ Printable canvis covers

Did I think of doing this today? Yep.

So forgive the half assed layout that I copied from the 'My year in art' post theme. But I think I did pretty good.

This year I:

Created 8.5 typesets - with Eyes as my current open project

Rebound my first set of books (ACOTAR Set for one of my friends)

Created my first paperback

Sent out 3 gift binds to authors i admire

Finished + shipped out ONE of my MTH2024 winners books

Typeset/printed all of the books for my other MTH2024 winner

Participated in MTH2025

Took a trip to Florida to say goodbye to my grandmother

Moved into a lovely town house

IRL, life for the last 4 months has been rough. Work has been trying to kill me - so I haven't gotten to actually sit down and make art in weeks. I've been barley making it through the day intact and I've just started to dive back into it.

I stitched headbands today, and then worked on this ETS typeset. I bought a few new backcloths from Hollanders to try and im a EXCITED to make stuff again.

OK - so this is my first real rebind. Up to this point I have only bound my own text blocks. No one is surprised - I do enjoy picking the harder option first. My friend group does a Summer Solstice Selebration - which is a secret Santa gift exchange as far from Xmas as possible. My person loves the ACOTAR series, and I figured I could technically make the books for around our spending limit for gifts.

There is a lot of existing inspiration for this series on Pinterest and Etsy - so for the research part of this bind I really just...spent sometime shopping. I am a frugal bitch, so I'll be honest- most of the posting for a 'custom binds' of this series feel GROSSLY OVERPRICED. Perhaps that is because I personally have the skill to make them myself, so the cost to me feel exorbitant but girl? 500$ for a set of 5 books? Kiss my ass.

I did purchase the pack of thr SVG images from the series- the wolf, the raven, the flower - because I a) did not have time to do it myself and B) if someone else already put in the time I can save a little time at the cost of a small coffee.

I made the covers in Canva. The book cloth for this was from Amazon, actually - the same type that I used for my Hawkeye bind. It worked really really well, was very thin, and comes in a bunch of colors. You can get 3 A5 books out of 1 roll with some left over. I used Siser vinyl and, honestly, I think that's the fucking vinyl to use going forward. I was SO worried about weeding the complex graphic, but this was cake. It took FOREVER, but that was not the vinyl's fault.

They look really good. Even if they just sit on her shelf, I think it's a pretty good gift. And hey, now I have a set of covers if I wanna do this again. Some close ups - they don't match, but they are my favorites outa the bunch.