I recently completed my bind of the wonderful wildfire by @butdriampagliacci! The cover art was commissioned from @v_0_3 on Twitter by the author, and I received permission to use it; the spine is a modified version of the design from TheCottagePress on Etsy, which I purchased the SVG file for (it was hard to find any graphics of flames that were both long enough and not too childish-looking). This bind was a lot of firsts for me, including actually making a post online about it, apparently. Whoops!
It was also my first time printing on bookcloth, and I'm pretty happy with the results, though the process wasn't without some mishaps.
More pictures below!
At first I wasn't sure what direction to take with the design, but after being shown the cover art and getting permission to try using it for my binding, I decided to lean into the red and blue theming with the endbands, endpapers, and the bookmark ribbons.
Just the typeset itself took like 2-3mos because I kept having to redo it as I learned more things I'd been doing wrong (or at least doing inefficiently) this whole time. The amount of things I learned about kerning alone... That's the fun of an amateur hobby though, and I feel like if I hadn't been working on a typeset while I got to know about these things, I wouldn't have remembered them anyway.
As for the covers, printing them wasn't so much of an issue -- I just cut the bookcloth (Cialux in white) down to letter size and my new inkjet handled it just fine. It wasn't quite as saturated as it would be on paper, but it still looks pretty good. The problem was that it could (and in one case did) get scratched pretty easily, so I ended up having to figure out how to coat it for protection. I ended up using Golden Archival Varnish Spray because our local Michaels had it, and it worked, but applying it was its own ordeal.
It was January when I did this, and the spray prefers warmer temps (also no direct sunlight) for application, so I ended up having to do it in my garage. I wore a respirator but the smell followed me back into the house, which was pretty unpleasant. Thankfully it did dissipate from the books themselves after a few days. I also had to smooth down the covers with a gloved hand after each application, or else there would be this white frosted layer of fuzzy fibers. I did 4 coats total, and if I had more time I probably would have done the full 6, but 4 was enough to make it more scratch-resistant.
This bind was also the first time I did graphite edges. I thought it would be a good fit for the bind, to invoke the look of charcoal. That had its own learning curve, but the end results are pleasantly shiny, and worth all the sanding that I had to do to get there!
I made 4 copies total: one experimental dud copy, one for a local friend, one for me, and one for the author. The dud copy also ended up being adopted by a different friend.
My Oct-Jan was pretty much entirely taken up by this bind and the other gifts I was making for Christmas, so I'm taking February off now to give my poor arms a chance to recover. Hopefully I've got a couple more ficbinding projects in me for 2026, but I'm pretty slow at these things, so who knows?
I recently completed my bind of the wonderful wildfire by @butdriampagliacci! The cover art was commissioned from @v_0_3 on Twitter by the author, and I received permission to use it; the spine is a modified version of the design from TheCottagePress on Etsy, which I purchased the SVG file for (it was hard to find any graphics of flames that were both long enough and not too childish-looking). This bind was a lot of firsts for me, including actually making a post online about it, apparently. Whoops!
It was also my first time printing on bookcloth, and I'm pretty happy with the results, though the process wasn't without some mishaps.
More pictures below!
At first I wasn't sure what direction to take with the design, but after being shown the cover art and getting permission to try using it for my binding, I decided to lean into the red and blue theming with the endbands, endpapers, and the bookmark ribbons.
Just the typeset itself took like 2-3mos because I kept having to redo it as I learned more things I'd been doing wrong (or at least doing inefficiently) this whole time. The amount of things I learned about kerning alone... That's the fun of an amateur hobby though, and I feel like if I hadn't been working on a typeset while I got to know about these things, I wouldn't have remembered them anyway.
As for the covers, printing them wasn't so much of an issue -- I just cut the bookcloth (Cialux in white) down to letter size and my new inkjet handled it just fine. It wasn't quite as saturated as it would be on paper, but it still looks pretty good. The problem was that it could (and in one case did) get scratched pretty easily, so I ended up having to figure out how to coat it for protection. I ended up using Golden Archival Varnish Spray because our local Michaels had it, and it worked, but applying it was its own ordeal.
It was January when I did this, and the spray prefers warmer temps (also no direct sunlight) for application, so I ended up having to do it in my garage. I wore a respirator but the smell followed me back into the house, which was pretty unpleasant. Thankfully it did dissipate from the books themselves after a few days. I also had to smooth down the covers with a gloved hand after each application, or else there would be this white frosted layer of fuzzy fibers. I did 4 coats total, and if I had more time I probably would have done the full 6, but 4 was enough to make it more scratch-resistant.
This bind was also the first time I did graphite edges. I thought it would be a good fit for the bind, to invoke the look of charcoal. That had its own learning curve, but the end results are pleasantly shiny, and worth all the sanding that I had to do to get there!
I made 4 copies total: one experimental dud copy, one for a local friend, one for me, and one for the author. The dud copy also ended up being adopted by a different friend.
My Oct-Jan was pretty much entirely taken up by this bind and the other gifts I was making for Christmas, so I'm taking February off now to give my poor arms a chance to recover. Hopefully I've got a couple more ficbinding projects in me for 2026, but I'm pretty slow at these things, so who knows?
medical journal (symptoms + medication tracker) for a friend! they wanted a bloody concept to lean in to the irony lol
I had a lot of fun making this, and the construction came out pretty well. did splatter edges for the first time, it was easier and more fun than I thought it would be!
this is actually their winter holiday gift, but they already know it's coming (they picked out the bookcloth and the page templates themselves). can't wait to get it shipped out!
medical journal (symptoms + medication tracker) for a friend! they wanted a bloody concept to lean in to the irony lol
I had a lot of fun making this, and the construction came out pretty well. did splatter edges for the first time, it was easier and more fun than I thought it would be!
this is actually their winter holiday gift, but they already know it's coming (they picked out the bookcloth and the page templates themselves). can't wait to get it shipped out!
I said I wouldn't have anything to post til the author copy of my ficbind arrived at its destination but surprise! I churned this out in a fugue in about 5h (and I feel like half of that was just me paring the leather, ugh).
This is a rose-themed journal for my mom. She wanted a full leather bind journal after seeing some of my bookbinding stuff and talking with me about things I wanted to try, so I took her to the shop with me to pick out a leather in person. I think originally she had some sort of mauve color in mind (which they did not have), but when we got there, there was this... statement piece of printed small skin, so I guess it was destiny(?)
My mom loves roses and colorful flowers in general, but she's pretty terrible at giving anything consistent care (me included), so inevitably all her plants die no matter what. She lamented last weekend that the roses in those curb island thingies in between lanes on the road looked so much nicer than hers at home. Well, they're not real roses, but at least these ones can't die on you, mom.
Design-wise, this was pretty low effort, since my mom specified what text she wanted where. The only thing I really added was the first page with a cute little frame for the owner's name. After the complicated considerations of my last two binds, this was pretty relaxing -- except for the leather paring, anyway. I'm going to have to get a better knife if I end up doing much more leather work.
no pics yet but I'm gonna be shipping out my first author copy of a fic bind tomorrow!!!
super excited and also relieved to finally be done with this, I've been working on it since at least April (I think... adhd brain bad at time @_@) and it's been a lot of trial and error and learning, but I think the final product looks pretty respectable
I'll post pics of the book once the author receives their copy, don't wanna spoil the surprise
(I also wanted to finish a journal I was working on for my mom this weekend but there were some setbacks with the cover of the fic bind, so... it didn't happen 💀next weekend for sure tho)
baby's first book! it's a completely blank book that I'll be using as a journal once I'm done with my current one; mostly made this to try out the binding process from start to finish.
it's got some problems, mostly due to impatience/inexperience (although if I could cut a straight edge on bookboard that sure would be nice lol) BUT it opens, it functions, and it even stands up straight, more or less!! I'm calling this a success
might eventually put a title on it later... probably when I need to test a title application method for an actual binding project lol
books by bird @baffledbirdbooks - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
