Towns End Bindery

Measures and base design for the cover done, next thing to do will be to let it sit overnight, all the pages under weight so they're pressed the next day.

I'll keep the finished design for myself until the day I finish this 👀

Evening Empire by fluorescentgrey / @yeats-infection (bound with permission)

FLIGHT OF DEATH – FLIGHT OF DEATH – FLIGHT OF DEATH – FLIGHT OF DEATH – Remus pulled the printout from the machine. Lily was leaning over his shoulder with a joint.

When I first learned that books used to be sold with pages uncut, leaving readers to slice them open with a knife and creating the deckle edges you see in many books, I immediately thought how exciting it would be to have a horror story in this format. It's like a form of personal communication with the story, the cuts getting more and more rushed and haphazard as you reach the climax. I knew there was only one story that could be such a perfect fit, Evening Empire which left me thinking about it and feeling so much dread for days on end.

Video of a page cutting and more details under!

I know this is different to what I normally do but I’ve been working on bookbinding, made using bits of old sketchbooks and genuine leather from an unfinished cosplay project (which I first got as scraps from my local belt maker) 

This is a fanbinding of The Dwarf Queen, a discworld fanfiction by @sassysnowperson which I loved and want to recommend.

Here's the finished printed fic!

I'm really proud of how this one has turned up to be, there are some errors but this one has been my best so far.

I already thanked them privately back when I asked them for permission, but I want to thank @carletes for letting me print her amazing fic, bringing it to life, and @afireflakeart for letting me use her stunning art to finish the look of the book!!

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 🤔