Towns End Bindery

My latest bookbinding project! (Or one of them tbh, I can't wait to show off several tinier books than this for the @renegadeguild Tiny Book Exchange.

This is my first tête-bêche featuring two classic Smallville fics: @rivkat 's fic Golden Rule paired with @seperis 's companion fic Slipping in Between. I've loved these fics for a while now and I've especially loved listening to dodificus's podific of Golden Rule. Both of the authors had permission statements in their profiles on ao3 and I really wanted to celebrate these two fics in print format. I really love the way that these two fics play off of each other. Golden Rule is excellent all on its own, with Clark's manipulation and the relationship he forges with Lex and SiB is such a great complement to that fic, providing a glimpse into Lex's pov throughout the events of the fic, all leading up to the big decision at the end.

Detail shots and process talk below the cut:

The Anatomy of Almost Forever by @sunsetplums . Typeset and design by me, featuring art by Vincent Van Gogh.

I love this fic and how this bind turned out. It’s a little piece of art just for me.

One set made as a trade and the other for me to keep.

Design wise, these are based specifically on a chapter in Duty of Care where Ilya tries to take the blame for breaking Pike’s vase.

This first fic is Ilya getting pieced back together through acts of love by everyone around him. Kintsugi fit thematically and I absolutely love the imagery. The layered HTV is meant to mimic the vase and gold repairs and the dust jacket.

For the second fic, Holding Patterns, I wanted to continue the broken vase theme from the first bind. Except for this time, instead of it (aka Ilya) being mended back together, it’s the final fracturing of Russia. The idea for the artwork comes from a chapter in “Duty of Care” when Ilya takes the Hollanders to Russia to visit the iconic Red Square in Moscow.

This fic made me cry. 😭 it was amazing. I loved it. But wow it’s gets you in the feels.

End-pages are hand marbled, and the photos don’t do justice. I used an iridescent white that makes them sparkle along with the gold paint. For the red pages, I had initially wanted to replace the gold with black, but unfortunately black paint still hates me. Despite that, I’m still very happy with the outcome.

Hand sewn endbands to continue the color theme.

Alright, I've got the first of many new projects to share today! This is a custom binding of on the same page, a Good Omens human!AU by Chekhov, in which Aziraphale and Crowley are both authors (one of religious literature, the other of smutty romances) who not only write parts of each others' books but also for the duration of the fic are pretending to be married so one of them can land a book deal. There's so much pining, friends. Pining all over the place. I even put pines on the cover.

We have skivertex green faux leather up there on the cover, for the spine and fore edge. I originally intended to do corner caps but I like this look better and it's easier to measure. Lots of long vertical lines. Title is in pewter HTV and no, I still have not learned my lesson about weeding swirly fonts. I will never learn. I wanted it to look like a romance novel with literary pretensions (this is a compliment) and it absolutely does. The tree print is scrapbook paper, though I've forgotten where I bought it. The story is set at a big fancy house in the woods in Vermont, so it's perfect.

Have a look under the cut for more photos!

I was asked which tutorials I followed to achieve this look by @0n1ythisandnothingmore, and I figured it might be helpful for others so I’ve compiled a list!

Under the category of “adventures in bookbinding”, today I realized that the section of the book binder clipped in the photo was actually PRINTED AND BOUND OUT OF ORDER.

I re-bound another book. This time, Project Hail Mary as a birthday gift for my boyfriend. The image in the window is a photo of the surface of the sun courtesy of NASA.

Finally got around to printing a dust jacket for my copy of Ferenc Molnár's 1923 play The Swan so I wanted to share it here!

This is the first book I tried printing at home instead of at a print shop, so the paper curled a bit more than I was used to, but it's really only noticeable when it's closed so it's fine for reading. It's definitely something I have to keep in mind for next time, though. I also decided to include some photos of the original Broadway production (Eva Le Gallienne and Basil Rathbone looked too good not to!) and added some reviews of that production on the back of the dust jacket.

For the dust jacket, I spent months debating what cover I should use, since I couldn't find any online, and somehow the movie posters from the adaptations (there were three, including one with Grace Kelly) didn't quite seem to fit. The swan illustration is actually from a 1924 newspaper ad about the play. I had considered using another photo from the production, but everyone I asked seemed to like the plain blue version better, so that's what I went with in the end.

Funnily enough, when I went to print it, I ended up getting two different shades of blue for it:

I'm not sure which I prefer, though the darker one seems to be the more popular one so far 🤔

On a whim I attended a 3 day course on bookbinding in early 2025 and am still having so much fun with it. Since I just finished my first 1 kg pot of glue (well... kind of "finished it"... a 3-week heatwave turned the remaining 10% into an near immovable goo thus finishing it for me) I thought it would be nice to do a little round up of the story so far.

I didn't snatch photos of all notebooks before giving them away but I still like the look of the overall collection ^_^

Five Centuries Of Japanese Kimono

cover in leather, cloth and paper

A special project for a special person and a special story!

Six months ago today, @scorp2510 posted the story KIA - Killed In Action, kickstarting the series Between Stars and Silver Rails.

A month later, I found out about it by some incredible stroke of luck and I fell deep. This VLD/HSR crossover was eveything I dreamt of, and even more I didn't dare hope for. It didn't even take me a week to take on a project for a fun typeset and bind for the first story of the series that was completed, File Code: HSS-CR-Δ-07.

Today, it's been officially six months, and the series is now over 360k words long, with 12 works (6 one-shots, 2 complete multichapter stories, 4 running multichapter stories. Also, some Easter eggs on my part, as a fun addition.)

I am 9 chapters late in reading, 5 chapters late in writing, as my current life does not really allow me to sit down and read/write. But I am stubborn, and I refused to not celebrate this milestone.

It is thus time for me to reveal another project that was in the works since the story was completed, but that I could only complete yesterday (right on time!): Marion's Adventure Book.

Marion is Scorp's Honkai: Star Rail OC, a sweet boy with the heart in the right place but clumsy morals. He's a Memokeeper who relies a lot on art to gather memories, and, most of all, who has synaesthesia.

The bind itself is Japanese stab binding with my faithful Dubletta Purple Blue, with a scrap of flower-patterned lokta paper that Scorp had admired on another of my binds not loong ago, and the inside is golden chiyogami brought back from Japan by a friend. Everything was laser printed on sketchbook paper to keep the idea of Marion's drawing book. Lots of colours for a colourful child!

The typeset was a little of a challenge: since Marion has synaesthesia, colours are very important for him. I thus decided to put all the names of colours... in their colour. Except, here's the caveat: I'm kinda colourblind. A little. So there was a lot of trial and errors. And whining about colours to my ever-patient partner.

Additionally, Marion's story is not (surprise surprise) only a happy, carefree one. At some points, Marion is at risk to lose his colours: for this, I chose to desaturate the colourful chapter title pages as the story went, until the colours came back. I also toyed around with adding some effects on words, that seem very logical intradiegetically but were hell on the printer. It still sort of works. Another win for FAAFO.

I wanted to keep the feeling of a children story, with pastel painting and fairytale elements, even if it's not all fairytales in Marion's troubled life. I went for a very round font, easy to read and with childbook feels (Comic Neue), that I pimped a little by adding touches of: - Century (for a formal but elegant style, when talking about Marion's Knight and his companion) - Coral Pixels and Aardvark Cwm Type (for a glitchy feel, when talking about the distortion or fragmented things) - Christmas Garden (for an elegant, flowery twist on the Garden of Recollection) - Austie Bost You Wear Flowers (for cute flowers in chapter titles), - Asian Girl and 2 Much Coffee (for handwritten things.)

The spacing wasn't easy. I usually make my typeset in a very classic way: no big line breaks, everything justified and square. Here, I went with something looser, to go with the representation of Marion's free spirit through Scorp's words and formatting.

Two mishapps, alas: a small guillotine accident that cut off the page numbers, and... falling short of the paper I decided to print on, which led to me having to switch and the 20 last pages being a slightly creamier colour.

Honestly, considering everything, I feel like I'm lucky it wasn't worse. Looking back, this is way too thick for an efficient stab binding, even with boards. And yet: it still works.

My newest collection is here! 🌞

These books are hand-bound and feature stamped covers designed by me. I’m moving towards making my own decorative paper designs.

This is just the beginning.

Embroidered book binding by Elizabeth Burden for 'Ballads and Sonnets' (1881) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Beige silk cloth with mesh of gold thread is oversewn with flowers and leaves in imitation of the cover designed for the standard copy by the author, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

So glad to finally have this done. Took me a lot longer to finish the paintings on the inside than I'd have liked, and I'm still seeing all the flaws, B U T I'm not redoing either at this point. Super pleased with the binding; I used a different thread type and it felt god to work with.

DCXDP - If you find a vigilante in the dumpster by lunamugetsu

V 1 & 2 (28/05/2026), 

Volume 1: This is a really fun cover and I love the way it has turned out. I originally had the idea to have the word dumpster be in the ‘shape/image’ of a dumpster placed over a simple one colour background but after playing around with font types and angles, I just couldn’t figure that out. I did still like the idea of a dumpster though so I went through a few different dumpster images before choosing one and then editing it to make it longer to fit the word dumpster across with a loopy font. I then added a bunch of different scratches and grubbiness and a bloody handprint as if getting out of the dumpster. After that I built up the background by finding a brick wall photo which I duplicated and edited with different colour tones, shadows, textures, light and shadows. For the rest of the text for the title, I quickly decided I wanted to do graffiti type fonts. I used 2 from font space with a focus on red hood red, black and ecto green choices. I added a bat, some splatters, volume number and shadows and glows. I threw on a red hood helmet with a crack. For the back, I choose 2 fonts and matching red and green colouring for the summary. This cover took me 51 minutes to create.

Volume 2: For this cover I kept the graffiti fonts and positioning of the title text and had the dumpster word scratch across a nice sofa. I created a room background with a textured white background, duplicated thin white trim and some edited floor design. I kept the spine and back the same; while I didn't change the summary, I likely would in future before printing off the 2nd volume cover. I created a little kiddy area with different toys, shadows and decorations. I kept the cracked red hood helmet on the cover and over the top of the whole wrap cover, I added a window shadow at a faint transparency level I liked with a little ghost hint on the back. This cover took me 21 minutes.

This rebinding/restoration project took me several months but was so so worth it.

This is a 1994 Russian edition compiling four Moomin stories, one of my childhood favorites (from when I was so sure that Tove Jansson used black and white illustrations solely so that I could have lots of fun coloring them).

ta da! with @startingatmidnight's blessing, i present to you..... a paperback copy of their fantastic fic, the astrobiology immersion program.