sideblog of @greaseonmymouth for my bookbinding stuff.
I'm a member of the Renegade Bookbinding Guild, a not-for-profit guild of bookbinders who focus on fannish works, including fanfiction, meta, original fic, zines, and other works. for more information, see @renegadepublishing
I know myself well enough to know I would not be very good at fanbiding and that would mainly frustrate me, so while I love fan binding and admire those who do it, I've never dabbled.
I have never regretted that decision more than I did waking up from the dream I recently had, where I excitedly bought a rare copy of the novel that Goncharov (1973) was based on, opened it up, and found that it was a hollowed out "book safe" for keeping valuables in.
@copperbadge were you looking for the Goncharov novel ?
I tracked down a copy of this invaluable classic and somehow got my hands on a near pristine copy secondhand from the 4th printing. It’s lost the dustjacket, alas, but that means I got it for like £5 and not the £4200 a first edition printing in fine condition goes for.
(Who’s the author? *looks at smudge on spine* uhhhh Mkkhill Montanann)
It looks right at home in my bookcase 🥰
Under the cut: a look inside at what the book holds:
Just kidding.
It holds only the air of regret and disappointment.
til solen står op is a 141,4k long carlxassad fic I wrote in 2024 and finished in spring 2025, probably mostly through white-knuckling through burnout (and jobhunting, and quitting my job without having another one lined up, an international move, and more jobhunting, and then starting the new job while recovering from burnout). this fic kept me sane but probably also made me insane.
and then late last year I decided to bind it in a style similar to the other Afdeling Q bindings I've done, both my fic and other's. (can you believe it's been 2 years since I last bound an Afdeling Q fic?? time sure does pass.) so I started typesetting and realised that binding this fic would mean splitting it into two volumes since a single volume A6 would've been too unwieldy and would probably also give me a TBI if I dropped it on my face in bed. it splits after chapter 26 since chapter 26 is the one where they kiss, so a natural breaking point. as it so happens that resulted in two almost equal length volumes - vol 2 is 26 pages and one signature shorter than vol 1.
dustjackets: recycled packing paper of unknown origin salvaged from the recycling bin at my old job
case: bound in duo eruption over 2mm boards. vol 2 has an additional stripe of 116gsm takeo tant select N-57 (yellow) on the front cover, which is a double sided embossed slightly translucent paper consisting of 100% virgin ECF fibre (whatever that means), which I rediscovered in my stash and which is there not as a design choice or to distinguish vol 2 from vol 1, but as a cover up for printer crimes
insides: endpapers are 150gsm daler-rowney canford tangerine and the text is printed on 90gsm munken pure smooth cream
with its brethren. look at it. that's insane.
a few process photos under the cut:
so thicc. I can't believe I managed to get these square. I was worried I'd have to round them, which I didn't want to do because it broke with the squareback hardback aesthetic I had for the other books.
I had to leave my printer behind in London and buy a new one in Copenhagen and the new printer does Not like to print on bookcloth. it kept jamming and ruined the vol 2 cloth by tracking ink all over the jammed part, and while I did manage to put vol 1 through, it wound up so wrinkled I wasn't sure I would be able to smooth that out again. (I did, PVA moisture to the rescue once again. all hail PVA moisture and its ability to erase sins.) jesus fucking christ. also it's hard to tell but just above my bindery logo it does actually say 'del 1' and 'del 2' respectively lmao I was not thinking straight when I decided to print the title in red on red bookcloth. (in my defense it worked really well on dubletta!!)
headbands are from dubletta bookcloth edge cutoffs - when you buy bookcloth like you do fabric i.e. not in precut smaller sheets, it usually comes with a raw fabric edge. I trim it off and then salvage it, and often use it in place of mull on tiny books (like this one). I thought my dubletta yellow orange offcut would be a nice complement to the duo eruption especially because it had that small orange stripe at the edge and so I turned it into fake headbands with a core of glued up macramé - I couldn't be arsed sewing headbands and while my textblocks were very tidy and could've borne being naked, I just thought this would be, well, neat.
as mentioned, the printer fucked up, so I had to do something about vol 2. duo bookcloth has famously been discontinued so I didn't want to scrap it unless I absolutely had to (I only have the one sheet of this colour!!) so I mulled over options (paper inlay? maybe a rising sun with rays?) and discarded them all until I rediscovered the aforementioned takeo tant select paper in my stash. it's slightly translucent so I cut away the janky bit from the front of vol 2, laid down a 20mm strip of 160gsm canaletto cream which seemed to match the thickness of the duo bookcloth and then covered it with a 22mm strip of the yellow takeo tant select. no fancy inlays or whatever, just an off centre stripe down the front cover.
the dustjackets I made for the other volumes, which were normal, slim, volumes, were printed on this recycled paper cut to A4 size to go through the printer, which also left a decent enough amount of flaps for it to work for A6 dustjackets. these chonky bois.... I did consider not doing dustjackets (I mean, why hide away these bright af books??) but I decided I did want to protect them a little, and after poking about a bit I realised my printer supports printing on american paper sizes INCLUDING LEGAL (A4 is 210x297mm whereas legal is 216x356mm), SO:
CHECK IT OUT!!! and yes the creases are intentional - this paper was wrapped around a delivery so that's where the creases are from, and the idea behind these dustjackets for this fandom is to evoke a sense of old and dusty case files. so brown paper, creases, coffee stains.
I trimmed the jackets to be 155mm in height - the board height was 154 but with the bookcloth wrapping around the edges that means a final height of 155m - and wrapped them around the books and LO
I grossly miscalculated the placement of the back cover copy on both jackets LMAO and the neat trick of having a continuous perfect round coffee stain on the lined up spines also didn't quite work out but FUCK IT, I am DONE, I will not bind another book for probably 3 months.
I'm really having a difficult time understanding tutorials on Tumblr about GitHub and I've been wanting to print a fanfic for a while now, I want it in an A4 with quatro settings. I'm just mow sure about the signatures and stuff because if I were to cut it horizontally in the middle I would only need five of those for a 20 pages in a single signature. And the ff is like 400 pages and when I tried the github thingy it only showed 10 pages. I'm really struggling here, please send help
Hi anon!
Is this the tutorial you mean? https://www.tumblr.com/greaseonmymouth/729248068169613312/as-youve-asked-for-asks-do-you-have-any
I’m not sure based on your information in this ask exactly what’s the problem, please can you explain?
The bookbinder JS tool has a preview of the imposed file, and that preview is only part of the whole PDF so you can check that it looks right. You need to click the “generate” button in order to get the complete imposed PDF. I will also recommend that you only print out one signature to start with so you can check that the imposition is correct as you otherwise risk wasting a lot of paper and printer ink if something is off.
The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar
Typeset by c_art for the Tiny Books Bang 2025 - I saved a copy knowing I’d definitely want to bind this. A7, quarterbound hardback, self-ended with sewn headbands. Printed on 90gsm Munken Pure Smooth Ivory and bound in Pepin Press Art Nouveau design paper and dark blue bookcloth.
I made a bunch of mistakes with this, and the whole thing took me about 3 times as long to put together than usual - I’m very out of practice! Now that I have a printer again and can make books more regularly again I should hopefully get right back into the groove. :)
Tiny Books Bang 2025 @renegadeguild - I bound @perfectlynormalbooks’s typeset of Alan Turing’s Computing Machinery and Intelligence.
Sextodecimo, printed to be A8 size and trimmed down somewhat due to printer margins being a pain to deal with, so this is also the tiniest book I have ever made!
The cover papers are marbled by Jemma Lewis and chosen for the wooshy bits, which to me feel very sci-fi (space travel, anyone?). The endpapers I chose because they reminded me of binary code and the “falling” text in The Matrix. I was trying to combine a digital feel with a very traditional medium!
I wanted the copies to match, but not be identical, so the typesetter’s copy has blue bookcloth, a blue bookmark ribbon, and blue and golden endbands, while mine has green.
I also made a miscalculation when I cut the marbled paper down, so I was short - and so the back of my copy wound up looking like that 😂 in addition to all the other little flaws as my copy was also the practice copy. I’m really happy with how both copies came out though!
last fall I was preparing for an international move, then moved, started a new job, tried to find a new printer to replace the one I left behind in London (no luck) and a new place to live. I will be moving again soon but I borrowed the shitty printer at the office to print this because I was getting itchy not being able to make books.
Hemlock & Wine by skazka is a Hamlet and Dr Faustus crossover fic that I read at some point last year or the year before (and then immediately read The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu, which is a sci-fi Hamlet retelling, and boy was it an experience reading the two back to back. 10/10 do recommend.)
the text is printed on 150gsm recycled cotton paper and sewn with dark green linen thread. the illustration on the title page is a German botanical illustration of hemlock, which I cannibalised to create section dividers and to dot little illustrations throughout the text. hemlock isn’t actually mentioned within the fic, but it is in the title, so.
the cover is a fake leather (or possibly bonded leather, idk) in a lovely dark wine red. the title is foiled on with a quill, in silver, gold, and red. could’ve gone with plain gold, but hemlock flowers are white and wine is red and well, here we are.
no endpapers - this is selfended. the recycled cotton paper was already Like That so finding an endpaper to match proved a challenge I wasn’t in the mood for.
Your binds are absolutely GORGEOUSSSS it inspires me to want to try fic binding more!!
Thank you 🥰 I’m glad to be of inspiration! It’s such a fun hobby and the design possibilities are ENDLESS. There were many reasons why I wanted to get into bookbinding (and fanbinding specifically) but my favourite thing about it is that each binding I make really is unique - there is nothing else like it out there.
Long time no see! I haven’t made a book since July!
I’ve had this textblock printed and ready since July and I wanted to get it bound before my imminent international move. I had scraps of two different chiyogami papers lying about plus an offcut of (probably) fake leather backed with paper - very thin, very flexible, suitable, I thought, for a tiny book. And all three bits I thought worked well together - the fireworks on the red have some dark blue dots in there.
A8, Yuri!!! on ICE fanfic: The Night is Young and the Music’s High by Opalish - a delightful fun little romp of a fic.
BBC Shetland, Jimmy/Duncan - well, sort of. It’s entirely platonic, with a level of affection on par with the series, which is to say, very affectionate. ;)
A8 sized, with cover papers and endpapers from two different Søstrene Grene origami blocks. The spine is green book cloth I had a scrap of. The text is printed on 90gsm Munken.
A6 quarto hardback with homemade bookcloth - first time making it myself! and the title stamped on the front cover with fabric paint. I have never watched a single Far til fire film (not even the modern remakes) but when I stumbled across this on ao3 I couldn’t pass it by. this fic touches on Danish queer history with such heart and warmth and wonderful characters (I should probably watch the films) that it became an instant favourite.
for ikke at tale om at når man har tilbragt tyve plus år i fandom på engelsk og med engelske canons så er det at læse fic på dansk, der har udgangspunkt i dansk kultur og historie, som regn for sjælens ødemarker.
craft talk under the cut.
this is my first time making bookcloth so I want about it the cheapest possible way - fabric square from Søstrene Grene’s craft section backed with tissue paper which was a) the only paper I had that was big enough for the fabric square and b) salvaged from a past gifty delivery. it went ok but after drying some of the tissue separated from the fabric. hashtag yolo etc. I decided to use it anyway, and I think the moisture in the PVA was just enough to reactivate the paste on the paper backing, because the finished case came out beautifully smooth - and soft. I opted not to infill the cloth so it’s open weave cotton and feels as soft as a pillow to the touch.
the endpapers are also from Søstrene Grene, decorative paper 120gsm. The textblock is printed on 90gsm Munken Lynx Smooth Natural White, I wanted a whiter paper than usual as the chapter end notes have colour photos that I wanted to preserve. headbands are sewn on, the core is leather cord and the thread is embroidery thread.
the title is stamped on using rubber stamps from, you guessed it - Søstrene Grene. (they actually have letter stamps with the Scandinavian alphabet characters but the London store only has that particular set in all caps and the lower case set only had the English alphabet. luckily an æ is easily improvised and I have both a steady hand and a fine tip paintbrush for the circle over the å.) the paint is shimmery metallic fabric paint from Lumiere.
belatedly, the process video of making this book from folding & cutting to casing in. I only post videos to TikTok and my username there is the same as here: @ashmouthbooks
Memories of Unreal Things by 7iris is a fic where Laurence’s stint with amnesia in Blood of Tyrants goes a little differently. ;)
I had a strip of Japanese chiyogami paper left over from when I’d used it as endpaper for another binding. I wasn’t sure what to do with it but kept it, it seemed a shame to throw away and yet it was too narrow to do anything with. turns out it’s just the right size for an A8-sized half binding with a bookcloth fore edge as well as spine.
the endpapers are double sided origami paper from Søstrene Grene 70gsm, and the text is printed on Munken Pure Smooth Cream 90gsm.
I don’t know what fabric this is unfortunately, it came from the bookbinders starting kit sold by Ratchford in the UK. The kit came with some 10 different bookcloth colours, multiple pre-cut sheets of each, and this was one of them. I’ve not yet used up the bounty from that kit! The fabric is paperbacked and fairly stiff, very easy to work with and has a great tactile feel. I love the colour too - dark blue.
Memories of Unreal Things by 7iris is a fic where Laurence’s stint with amnesia in Blood of Tyrants goes a little differently. ;)
I had a strip of Japanese chiyogami paper left over from when I’d used it as endpaper for another binding. I wasn’t sure what to do with it but kept it, it seemed a shame to throw away and yet it was too narrow to do anything with. turns out it’s just the right size for an A8-sized half binding with a bookcloth fore edge as well as spine.
the endpapers are double sided origami paper from Søstrene Grene 70gsm, and the text is printed on Munken Pure Smooth Cream 90gsm.
two sextodecimos (A8), both God’s Own Country fics. Hills of the North Rejoice by feroxargentea and Nice and Quiet by Deepdarkwaters.
These are the very first fics I read for this fandom, way back, so they hold a special place in my heart. I wanted them to look homey and cosy and bright, the matchy vibes came about when I was looking at my stash and picking out papers and cloths.
The bookcloths are Dubletta Yellow Orange and Duck Egg Blue, the cover papers are Søstrene Grene design papers 120gsm and the endpapers are Søstrene Grene double sided origami papers 70gsm. The text is printed on Munken Pure Smooth Cream 90gsm (long grain).
two fics by missmariie, Floorspace and Heifern’t you had enough of me. both are BBC Shetland, Jimmy/Duncan.
this is the second of the homemade bookcloths I made recently - I’m delighted that I’m now able to make bespoke bookcloths in any colour and pattern I desire! decided to put this to use for a matching set of fics.
the fabric is from Søstrene Grene, backed with tissue paper. the endpapers are double sided origami paper also from Søstrene Grene, 70gsm. the text is printed on Munken Pure Smooth Cream 90gsm.
these are both A7 octavos, but slightly different: one has a spine and the other has not, instead a tiny breakaway spine that rounds out from the textblock.
A6 quarto hardback with homemade bookcloth - first time making it myself! and the title stamped on the front cover with fabric paint. I have never watched a single Far til fire film (not even the modern remakes) but when I stumbled across this on ao3 I couldn’t pass it by. this fic touches on Danish queer history with such heart and warmth and wonderful characters (I should probably watch the films) that it became an instant favourite.
for ikke at tale om at når man har tilbragt tyve plus år i fandom på engelsk og med engelske canons så er det at læse fic på dansk, der har udgangspunkt i dansk kultur og historie, som regn for sjælens ødemarker.
craft talk under the cut.
this is my first time making bookcloth so I want about it the cheapest possible way - fabric square from Søstrene Grene’s craft section backed with tissue paper which was a) the only paper I had that was big enough for the fabric square and b) salvaged from a past gifty delivery. it went ok but after drying some of the tissue separated from the fabric. hashtag yolo etc. I decided to use it anyway, and I think the moisture in the PVA was just enough to reactivate the paste on the paper backing, because the finished case came out beautifully smooth - and soft. I opted not to infill the cloth so it’s open weave cotton and feels as soft as a pillow to the touch.
the endpapers are also from Søstrene Grene, decorative paper 120gsm. The textblock is printed on 90gsm Munken Lynx Smooth Natural White, I wanted a whiter paper than usual as the chapter end notes have colour photos that I wanted to preserve. headbands are sewn on, the core is leather cord and the thread is embroidery thread.
the title is stamped on using rubber stamps from, you guessed it - Søstrene Grene. (they actually have letter stamps with the Scandinavian alphabet characters but the London store only has that particular set in all caps and the lower case set only had the English alphabet. luckily an æ is easily improvised and I have both a steady hand and a fine tip paintbrush for the circle over the å.) the paint is shimmery metallic fabric paint from Lumiere.
hey - i’m indigostohelit, the author of the old english star trek fic, and bumped across your post about your bookbinding of it—holy toledo! it’s SO beautiful and you took such care and thought with the text. i wanted to express my admiration and craft respect on the one hand & i guess my personal gratitude on the other, it was so nice to see this in the wild!
Ahhh I am so very pleased that you like what I’ve done with it! I do truly love this piece of nerdery and I had a great time typesetting it. here are a few more photos - the entirety of the two texts side by side and a few extra shots of your translation notes:
when I decided to do colour bars to make it super extra obvious what was what I of course couldn’t help but make the colours match those of Kirk and Spock’s uniforms. I know Kirk wears yellow, but he does also have a green shirt with more elaborate cuffs that he wears on occasion. (green prints better than yellow, also.)
when I read the last line of your translation note the first time I YELLED. truly would not have caught the shift if you hadn’t so blatantly highlighted it. chefs kiss, no notes, perfect.
thank you for writing this and for sharing your thoughts wrt language and translation as well, truly my favourite part of the whole thing. once a linguist always a linguist…
High School Reunion, class of ‘85 by @deputychairman
I used this cover paper previously for another book where everything went wrong and it warped halfway to hell, but this time everything went smoothly and the book came out crisp! This is cobra kai era fic but I couldn’t resist using some more 80s appropriate colours. This is the entire series, three fics total.
