A collection of hand bound books created by ML Townsend of Towns End Bindery (@towns_end_bindery on Instagram). I also reblog books I think are pretty.
This is possibly the most time consuming project I’ve ever worked on. The moment I thought I was done, some other idea would come up and the work would continue. That was how the process felt with this piece.
Photos of the book itself can be found in this post. The crown foil on the protective board piece came from Fable and Bind. The maps are from the 2011 Batnum Books Trade Paperback Edition of Game of Thrones. All other art is my own original design.
This was my first time making a box on my own. Before this, I had only ever made a clamshell box in a workshop at the International Printers Museum.
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My second illustration for my typesetting of I wish you were my husband 🤗 It's legit my favorite scene in the entire fic and I can't help but swoon each time I reread it.. 🙈
The typeset is all done now and I got everything ready to start printing my signatures! I'll keep you guys posted! (How exciting 🤭)
Usually when I pick a fic to make into a book, it’s one I’ve already finished. But this time I was about two-thirds through Disjoint by @liesonthefloordramatically when I decided I wanted to make a book out of it! Including illustrations by @anticiajk to make this binding extra pretty :3
Extra pics and a lot of yapping below the cut
This initially wasn’t going to be a hardcover binding; I was actually thinking about doing a Japanese-style binding. It’s a fairly short fic, and I already had some ideas brewing. I’d even bought some paper for that purpose and sketched some of the ideas I had. But once I knew I could use Anticia’s illustrations, I realized that that binding style wouldn’t quite allow those illustrations to shine, at least not at my current level of experience. So, I switched to a hardcover binding. Properly incorporating the illustrations into the typeset was a new, but fun experience!
I also decided this would be the book where I would try making a dust jacket. It’d be a cool new thing to try, AND a great way to simultaneously use Anticia’s cover illustration and execute some ideas of my own. It also meant I could leave out the summary page I usually include in these bindings, which felt a little weird
Disjoint is fairly short compared to most of the other books I’ve made, and for a while I wasn’t quite sure there’d be enough pages for a hardcover binding, but thankfully there were!
Making the book block was mostly quick and uneventful. Though, the thing that should’ve been the easiest part, trimming it, became the most troublesome. I don’t have the tools to trim a book block myself, so I usually let a local printing shop do it for me. However, they had closed for a few weeks, and I was under pressure to finish this book roughly within a week. I actually traveled to a nearby city to see if any print shops there could trim the book block! It was a very fun experience because my walk to both print shops took me through parts of the city I hadn’t ever seen before.
Since the dust jacket would have an illustration and the title and everything, I decided the design on the cover itself would be simple. Since the fic is about Bruno, I wanted to add elements reminiscent of his character design. The obvious choice was replicating his suit pattern, which was a nice and easy change of pace from previous cover designs.
Also! An idea left over from my initial idea and modified a bit, a reading ribbon with one of Bruno’s zippers attached to it. Like the cover pattern, it wasn’t difficult to make but I had a lot of fun. I cut out the base shape from some really thick black paper, and cut the details from some nice textured gold-colored paper, and glued those together. I thought I’d use my screw punch to make a hole to pull the ribbon through, but the hole I’d included in the cutting pattern was big enough for me to use a needle to thread the ribbon through. Once that was done, I tied the ribbon into a knot and glued the loose end to the ribbon to make things look a little neater. Probably could’ve just glued the ribbon to itself without the knot, but whatever
The dust jacket was both easier and more trouble than I expected to make. I thankfully didn’t need to adjust the illustration’s size much to have it wrap around the spine and still look good, but I still needed to reprint it a couple of times (I’d made some easily fixable goofs which showed up more obviously on paper than on my screen XD). My old-ass printer also didn’t care for the slightly sturdier printing paper I wanted to use, so I had to use regular paper instead. After all that, though, I just cut off the excess parts, folded the dust jacket around the cover. I was done, and right on time too!
This project was an absolute delight. Especially after my previous binding went awry at the very end, this was perfect to cheer me up again. Making the book block didn’t take nearly as long, and the cover design was a lot easier to figure out. At the same time, I got to try tons of new things! Integrating illustrations into the text, making a little charm to attach to the reading ribbon, and making a dust jacket! This book really feels like it’s got a bit more character when compared to some of my previous bindings, and not just because it’s a fanfic and binding centered around one fictional character in particular ;p
This is a small book I made as a birthday present for a friend who is watching The Phantom of the Opera musical this weekend. Size is letter sextodecimo.
Some fancy photos my client took of the Game of Thrones rebind commission.
He made it look so special, like it’s from another place and time 😭.
For those curious, the back drop is actually from the gorgeous astrological fireplace found on the second floor of my absolute favorite bar and distillery, The Obscure.
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I've finally completed something I've been wanting to do for YEARS-- bind a copy of one of my absolutely favourite fics of all time; Moonlight (Every Single Night) by @heleentje and @ginneke! This was my first bookbinding project (aside from another I worked on simultaneously, but details.) so there are some errors but I'm so proud of it nonetheless!
Most of the graphics came from VectorNoob on Etsy, and what didn't I made myself!
Since the passage of days is so integral to the story of Moonlight, my idea with the endpapers was a sunrise going into a sunset, but I'm not sure how well that came across, haha! And within the text itself, under each chapter I included the sheikah symbol for h or g, depending on if Heleentje or Ginneke wrote that specific chapter/canonised side fic! I also ordered two sets of the dtf transfers for the cover and did end up only needing one, so I used some of the left over transfers to make a matching felt bookmark as well :D The transfers came a little too big despite me having remeasured like four or five times, so I had to chop it up to make it fit and that's why some of the text ended up tilted lol.
I had a lot of fun working on this, and I'm so so so happy it's finally done!
One more photo below of something included within the text itself that is actually spoilers for Moonlight!
I also had permission to include the comic Heleentje commissioned @blueskittlesart to make of a particular scene! I'm so happy I got to include it, too!
let’s be real the pressure to use AI as an adult is exactly what they said the pressure the do drugs as a teenager would be like but the people that told us that caved immediately for the AI and definitely did not just say no
After almost 8 months I can finally reveal my secret project, a fan bind of one of the most delicious Silco fics ever. Drink With Me was a monster of a book, and I had so much fun letting it get bigger and bigger. The cover art is gold, orange, and black heat transfer vinyl (that didn't want to photograph well on the spine)
The original plan was red, gold, and black for the color motif, but when I saw the name "whiskey" for a color of Duo cloth I had to. I had to. So the headbands have a dark brown instead of black to match the spine cloth. The endpapers were marbled by hand by a friend of mine on gold paper.
The typeset was the most involved I've ever done so far. I cannot stop myself from maximalist all the time, even when I'm trying to be subtle, which I wasn't, here. I went nuts with the flowers.
I commissioned the title page art from the wonderfully talented @celine-designs because I knew exactly what I wanted it to be and knew I'd need like 10 years to be able to draw it myself. It needed to be that moment. I took inspo from Celine's label design for the cover art.
Anyway thank you so much @ink-and-dagger for this joyous ride of a story. I laughed, I cried, I screamed, I stayed up way too late reading, I had to remind myself I was asexual a few times. I wanted to return your labor of love with one of my own. Thank you for sharing this story with all of us, and I hope when you see this you see a reflection of the incredible time and effort you put into your writing.
Project #54, Binds #75 & 76
Guide Thomas Series by @alex51324
Completed: April 19, 2026
Size: Folio. 174,531 words, 460 pages.
Summary: After being arrested for gross indecency with another male person, Thomas Barrow learns that he has a natural gift which will plunge him into a startlingly different society which exists in parallel with the one in which he has lived his life until now. He’s not entirely sure whether or not that’s a good thing…
I was so intimidated to start this project because I was certain I was going to have to break it up into two volumes based on word-count, but the three stories in the series didn't divide evenly. But with a clever use of Times New Roman for the body font (very good for packing a lot of text into a small space) and minimal chapter headers, I was able to cram it all into one book relatively easy. After two years of agonizing about the formatting once I started it was done in a couple days and most of that was playing around with the decorative fiddlybits for the title pages (art nouveau frames from pixabay.com). The title font is Shelten and the subheadings are IM Fell English.
At some point in the story Thomas has to wear a livery consisting of a bottle green jacket with gold button and he hates it. So naturally that's what I took the cover inspiration from. The outer decorative papers are from a batch of paste papers I made in the summer of 2025. They're a little less green in person. Endpapers are from a scrapbook paper pad.
When I was first started making author copies I really wanted them to match exactly with the copy I was keeping for myself but I'm really enjoying the coordinating-but-not-identical vibe these days.
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This is one of the most elaborate typesets I've ever made. I'm so excited to put it together. It's gonna be a letter quarto sized book. It's going to be a gift for my husband (hopefully ready by Christmas).
If anyone has any questions about the choices I made for this typeset, feel free to ask!
The title page art was illustrated by Chu Thang (Instagram: chu.tienthang).
Another Phantom! But this time, it’s a rebind for a friend. I experimented with inkjet canvas. It feels and looks pretty legit. I sprayed the case down with varnish to seal and protect the colors. I added these metal corner protectors that have bats on them because bats are one of their favorite animals.
This was also my first time adding a pocket to the end paper of a book. I was asked to preserve the front of the original soft cover, so now it has a spot right inside!
The cover art was originally painted by artist Annie Stegg Gerard.
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Showing a little of my gold foiling process, which is all done by hand 🖐️!
I use a memory keeper’s foil quill, which came with a roll of gold foil when I bought it. It’s a wonderfully affordable option for those who don’t have the budget for machines like cricut or silhouette, and HTV.
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