Towns End Bindery

I am done with six out of seven of the Austen rainbow, the only one missing is Mansfield Park. I had originally considered going red for the book, but I searched my stack of fabrics high and low, and could not manage to find any piece of red I even remotely liked the look of. So instead, I am going to make her a blue-ish green.

Two Fanbindings of Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary (one in english, one in german) as a coupled twin-binding for me and my bestie who went to see the movie with me immediately when I expressed my wish for it! (Which is why the location mark is blacked out, thats the cinema we went to!)

While browing I saw these two papers and knew i needed to use them for endpapers. This also sparked my wish to bind this book at all. It took me around two months from conception to finished product.

Do you come back from conventions, art fairs and festivals with pockets full of loose stickers, or little paper bags that you immediately lose in your suitcase, or forget in a drawer when you get home? These little books provide a place to collect your stickers until you've found a permanent home for them - just stick them in and then peel them back out when you're ready, with minimal loss of stickiness!

Now in floral covers 😌🏵️🌸🌼

Finally got around to binding one of my favourite books ever, after procrastinating for over six months! I originally hadn't planned to make a dust jacket for this one (it became necessary to hide a error I made with the cover), so I was at a bit of a loss when it came to selecting the image for it. Luckily I came across a very nice promotional picture in the Motion Picture Herald for The Mark of Zorro (1940). It was originally yellow, so I edited it to match the cover of the book (one yellow dust jacket is enough, I think!) and I'm quite satisfied with the cherry red of the final product.

Fanfiction Classics - Jegulus edition ⭐️ ☀️

(Let’s be real, it’s been like 90% Jegulus so far).

Although the Wind - by pastapug @milomoonsies

A Habit to Kick (The Age-Old Curse) - by supernova_stardust @supernova-stardust

Flat 390 & All Pain Is Practice - by @madammoons

Rainbow Sterek Green brings you Lap Magnet by @prairie-grass. A hilarious and sexy accidental mate bond fic.

Royalty free art from pngtree, I love the more softer look of this bind, with the textured background, and I had the perfect endpapers for it too! So happy with how it turned out!

Putting the fun in "Funeral Management And Costs", a 1921 polemic by Quincy Dowd. I can safely say it's a book resistant to general interest, but! A fine subject for a dancing skeleton bookmark. Did I make a book to use two feet of novelty ribbon? Of course I did. (Build in another post.)

I think it's p obvious what's going on here, stylistically. You got some Memphis (particularly Martine Bedin's simple forms with complex texture, I'd say), a bite of irony poisoning, a rather large serving of Haring, and, obvs, the Pac-Man cereal box. You know- the 80s starter pack. But fun like the pre-packaged, pre-digested nostalgia of the 80s that lacks the sticky car seats or cigarette smoke or Reagan.

Got to give it to Reverend Quincy Lamartine Dowd. He's far more a reformist firebrand than his book's title may imply. "Funeral" isn't a how-to so much as a condemnation of the then-modern funerary practices. He wanted municipalized deathcare, cremation, and less extravagant funerals, in that order. Don't forget; this book was written less than five years after the end of WW1 And the Spanish Flu (a carefully unmentioned pall that hangs over the book regardless of its textual absence- sounds familiar). A lot of people were suffering "burdens borne from the grave, placed upon the cradle," to paraphrase the foreword. And, not for nothing, those burdens are even higher, adjusting for inflation, over a century later.

This is my bookbinding of the fantastic fic series Twelve days of clonemas by rook (jsunday)

(The wonderful @rooksunday here on tumblr)

It was my very first time binding a fanfiction and I am super happy about how it turned out! Thank you rooksunday for giving me permission!

Everybody if you love Clones and Christmas you should check it out!

I wanted a light Christmas-sy feeling but nothing too overwhelming since this is a series primarly about clones. I think that the single decorated stripe on all (Corrie) red has just the right balance.

It is in "A Format" book measurements (17.8×11 cm) which is a format that I have not heard about much in tutorials (I think because they mostly use USA paper sizes) but is very popular in my country for slim books (we call them pocketable books) so it felt natural to use.

I am also proud of the endbands choice...I can't get a good photo but they are red and light yellow exactly like the decorated paper stripe which is a very nice parallel!

Naruto - A holmes in Konoha by GremlinSR

V 1, 2 & 3  

I was not sure what design I wanted to use when it came to these covers but I did want to go with a more Sherlock Holmes vibe. I spent some time looking at different Sherlock Holmes books to see if there were any to recreate but while I did find some elements I liked from different covers, I did not find any I really liked. I did decide on 2 design elements I liked from some different covers, text in the background of a keyhole and a shadow figure of sherlock holmes side profile. I decided to do a simple circle cut out with I chose a section from the fic as the text over a parchment texture/colour background. I looked for some photos of young detectives until I found a photo to edit into a shadow figure. Originally I wanted to have a magnifying glass round the cut out but did not like the look so did a shadow instead.  I chose a few different fonts to have on the cover and copied over onto the spine. For the back I added a page, drop shadow and the summary in a loopy font with some ink splatters. I added a bunch of different textures over the green Konoha colour background.  The volume 1 cover took me about 39 minutes to complete. 

For the second cover, I kept almost exactly the same format; same font and location choices with the only difference being the V1 to a V2, same summary page on the back, same spine, and the same circle with shadow as a cut out.I did find a different section for the text cut out, different splatters on the back corners and a different girl shadow figure I created from a random photo I found on google. This cover only took me 12 minutes to make and the majority of this time was finding a section of text to use. Not that it will be super obvious or even readable really.

Same as the other two covers, I kept most elements of the cover exactly the same and just changed the text section, volume number, figure and ink splatters. For the figure I found a photo of a sakura cosplayer I liked the pose of and edited it into a shadow figure. This one took me 7 minutes to complete and I then spent a further 3 minutes messing around with the different colours for the 2nd and 3rd volume as I didn't really want them all to be green. I am not sure whether I would chose red or blue.

So, here's the exterior. Nice and simple and elegant!! Very straightforward!

Then, there's the inside. I was like 'hmmm, well, they met when they were working at a video game store together. And they still game a lot together and it's important to them. I know, I'll draw this thing like an illuminated manuscript!!'

Reader, this is where I lost control of the situation. This is where we come to the fact that I'll have to reblog this multiple times just to attach all the relevant images. I came up with eleven "main" images, eleven simple verso images so people wouldn't sign the wrong spot by mistake, two inhabited initials for the couple, and one demo page not included in the book directly explaining the concept for how the pages were laid out (spot for name + spot for message). I finished that last page uhhhh thursday. For a saturday wedding.

Before I get any deeper, i have to give MASSIVE props to the dobie draws 'codex pokemonus' illuminated manuscript zine. I highly recommend checking that link out, because it's a delight. I bought this thing, ohh... I'm not even sure. At LEAST half a decade ago. When i was gathering all my references and resources for this project, this was unquestionably the most helpful one. The influence is most obvious in the venusaur vines the pokemon pages, but it was truly, genuinely a LIFESAVER when it came to references for how hands and feet and faces could be drawn for little Creatures, and I'm so grateful. I would also like to state for the record that i learned medieval notation specifically to transcribe the jigglypuff song and that may be the detail that delights me most in this whole project

And since i have one spare image slot left, I'll also throw in one of my verso images, as a teaser while i line up my next reblog

No. I am boo boo the fool, most of these designs were so simple they were plain impossible for my sleep deprived brain to draw 😂 So some of these draw from the games directly, and some are more from the cabinet or box art, whatever i could find with a visual identity to latch on to.

So, for roll call purposes here, in order on the tumblr post, we've got: qbert, pitfall (featuring a beautiful pixel rope), frogger, major havoc, centipede, pac-man (both man and ghost), space invaders, berserk, yar's revenge, annnnnd et!

I think pitfall was what sold me on this idea conceptually, but et is my absolute favorite of the bunch. Look at him. Look at my wonderful hideous son. One thing i learned on this project is that if you're trying to get an illuminated manuscript vibe and it just isn't landing, try drawing the eyes Wrong, and that's very likely to do the trick

All of these pages were SO fun. Browsing the kirby wiki for the funnest little Creachurs was a delight. Working on mother brain was one of my favorite parts. The sonic page is my favorite concept out of the whole lot, using the loop as a frame for the message portion. And of course, once I was reminded of the animal crossing wedding couple, they HAD to feature prominently 😂

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE. My brother and his now-wife play world of warcraft together. He got her into it, and I think that's a cruel thing to do to your partner, but what do i know. And a few of their guildmates were even invited to the wedding! So a couple months back, i asked them for images of their characters, "for reasons." The reasons were to draw them each inhabited initials for the title page of the book :3c

(my brother, at the wedding: 'i thought you just wanted them for inspiration!!!' me, cackling: 'FOOL. when have i ever practiced self-restraint when it comes to crafts?????’)

And then!!!! In chronological order, this is where i paused to draw the eleven verso images in a fever haze and actually printed the book and made it. Fun story, my printer started misprinting images in the middle of this and I had to make a trip to my parents' place and use their printer to get the actual book pages. But once it was assembled and drying (it was a k118, also, which i don't think i mentioned), I staggered back to my tablet and drew a demo page for how i envisioned the signings. My little treat to myself is that it features haggard versions of me, including skeleton me in the corner.

And it all worked! It all worked out really well!! I'm SO glad its over, and I have two sets of lotr that I made concurrently as gifts that i need to scrape together a post for. But this came together better than I could have hoped, and I have learned important lessons about how long art like this takes me 🤣 But I've also learned how to do these pseudo-illuminated pages and the term 'inhabited initial'! I definitely, DEFINITELY plan to use that knowledge for much goofier and more frivolous purposes as soon as I rest up a bit. This was a much bigger project than I expected, but I'm SO happy with it

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

In which Fanfiction and Figurines get Orion Pax Fragged by lordofgravity aka @kitkatcreampuff

Orion pax is just a humble archivist! A humble archivist with a double life on the Megatronus forums and a growing collection of ummmm tasteful merch. nothing too crazy. When his friends gift him a ticket to see Megatronus in action, suddenly things take a sharp left hand turn and Orion finds himself in the middle of the craziest x reader fanfiction he could dream up: Actually romancing the gladiator himself with no screen to hide behind. Primus save him.

Fandom: Transformers: Prime

Relationships: Megatron/Orion Pax, Megatron/Optimus Prime, Jazz/Soundwave

Rating: Explicit

dear dear @dodici12's books made it safely, so I can post pics now!! :D this is the wonderful See You Upside Down, the killugon reunion fic that made me cry my eyes out at 1:30 am sometime in 2020, and to this day makes me feel All the Emotions. dodici just gets these kids, inside and out, and her writing is such a joy and a comfort--it breaks your heart and makes you laugh all in the same breath!!

this is also a re-bind of one of the very first books I'd ever bound, and it's so much fun to see how I've changed and improved! she got the full makeover--trimmed edges, foil titling (compliments of Charlotte, my Cricut), hand-sewn headbands, decorative endpapers, a newly-designed title page, my new imprint logo, and my updated typesetting style! I am ridiculously fond of both copies, but the story inside is the most important part <3

also re-made some new copies of dodici's Playing With Matches and Feral! These ficlets were so much fun to revisit, and they never fail to make me lose my marbles over pre-CAA killugon T_T