City Canvas Bindery

fic binds etc from @carcrash429

[citycanvasbindery]

Hello and welcome!

I made this blog to document the fanbindings I make after being inspired by some friends who have also started in this hobby this year. I always like seeing what other people have created and thought maybe people would want to see what I've created as well :)

broad technique notes, for anyone curious or for anyone who's thinking about getting into fanbinding themselves:

all of my binds are paperback. this is mostly because I prefer to hold paperbacks while reading, but also because it does not involve any sewing (since my needle-holding fingers are already mad at me for the amount of cross-stitching I do)

I use affinity publisher to typeset fics. It's pretty straightforward and there's a lot of tech support out there for troubleshooting. plus, they have a built-in tool for finding vector graphics from pixabay, which is very convenient

I primarily print in A5 or A6 page sizes (A5 is half of a letter page, A6 is half of A5) on 24lb paper. I use bookbinder to format my straight PDF for printing purposes - for my A5 books I print folio style with a signature length of 1, and for my A6 books I print quarto style perfectbound - for A5 books, I fold the pages (no cutting!) and then do a straightforward perfectbound gluing. - for A6 books, I cut the pages and use the double fan method of gluing.

once the textblock is glued together, I cut and fold a cover paper (66.7lb or similar) into the correct sizes and glue the spine in. If I included decorative endpapers, I will glue those to the cover paper after the spine is finished drying

typesets of my own fics can be found here, if you'd like to print and bind your own copy go for it (and send me pictures so I can see!!). if you want a typeset of someone else's fic that I've bound, please reach out to me with the specific fic and I am happy to share it if I have that author's permission

I am still very new to this, but if you have questions, etc, feel free to comment, send an ask, or DM my main account (@carcrash429)

[citycanvasbindery]

Book 10

is a duology of a fic by @cindersapsecrets and its remix by me! since it's fun to send people gifts that are books of things they've written :) combined, these fics total just shy of 9k words, which isn't quite enough to make an A6 size book so I experimented with A7 size instead!

smol.

The text font is Caladea 9pt, and the total size ended up at 77 pages (6 sheets).

little tiny book, I love it so dearly

(also I told you guys that mega arrows pack was gonna come in handy, look it showed up here as well :P)

[citycanvasbindery]

Book 9

The fics in this book were also ones I hadn't read before deciding to bind, for very similar reason as book 8 (many ATLA fics, difficult to sort through, found these through a friend's bookmarks and loved them!) (ty to @sword-and-stars for having blanket permission to make transformative works!)

The cover paper on this one is sort of a wood pattern, and the endpapers are reddish leaves (red -> fire -> Zuko). I realized after the fact that the wood doesn't particularly make sense considering the fire nation ships are made of metal but oh well I think it looks nice.

the art and the scene breaks are from a pack of 'doodles and squiggles' and the font is Rockwell 10pt (title font is Bookman Old Style 20pt). the series totals about 40k words, and in an A6 size comes out to 198 pages (26 sheets).

[citycanvasbindery]

Book 8

The fic in this book is one that I actually hadn't read before I decided to bind it. I haven't read a lot of Steve/Bucky fics because there's eleventy bajillion of them and it's overwhelming to think about sorting through them. But! I went rifling through a friend's bookmarks and found this and devoured it and immediately started typesetting it because it's sososo good (ty to leveragehunters for having profile permission for fanbinding!)

yes, that is me learning how to print on the front and back of the cover in addition to the spine!! the fic summary just fit really well as a back of a book blurb, and the vintage dog illustration also fit the vibes of the book so wonderfully. the cover is white marble looking so that I can really show off the dog illustration lol

the end papers are starry in reference to something in the fic I don't want to spoil if you haven't read it, and then I snagged a vintage graveyard image for the inside art because half the story takes place in a graveyard

the inside text is Perpetua 12pt and the title font is Sylfaen. this fic is around 55k words and in A6 size came out to 300 pages (40 sheets). the scene break flourish is from a pack of dividers from Etsy

[citycanvasbindery]

Book 7

One of the first purely DC fics I read (I think), book 7 is Ain't No Compass, Ain't No Map (ty to ebjameston for giving me permission to bind this!)

I was very pleased to find paper with actual compass designs on it for this book. like how perfect is that?

I used rust-looking endpapers because Gotham gives me the same vibe as the rust belt cities and got a line drawing map of St. Louis and flipped it around for the interior (based on this post)

the main text is Carlito 10pt, the fancy invitation script is Monotype Corsiva 10pt, and the handwritten bit on the back of the invitation is Ink Free 9pt.

the fic totals about 51k words, which in an A6 size ended up at 272 pages (35 sheets). It's a very holdable size. I've spend a lot of time just holding this one in my hand because it's so satisfying.

[citycanvasbindery]

Book 6

Book 6 was a DELIGHT to work on and I felt very sneaky about deliberately making this book as a surprise gift for a friend 😎

Behold!

because I was already sending @wyxan several other books and I thought of the 'wyxanthology' pun and literally could not help myself, I had to do it lol.

the cover paper is flowers because xan has an absolutely beautiful flower garden and I wanted to represent that with the book

The text font is Goudy Old Style 12pt, and the title font is Goudy Stout 20pt. Collectively the stories total about 30k words, which for an A6 size book ended up at 131 pages (17 sheets).

[citycanvasbindery]

Book 5

Book 5, if you were a mythical thing by @kangofu-cb is a comfort read to me, just a very kind story all the way through, so I was really excited to make a physical copy for myself

(I swear this is the last time that the same ficbind will have different covers, I've got a system down now lol)

at first I tried the 'print info on the cover' thing with a flower kind of paper, but it didn't show up super well and then I found the AWESOME glittery kind of paper that I think is supposed to imitate a topographical map so obviously I had to pivot and use that. shiny ✨

I was midway through typesetting this fic when I found out from CB herself that you can buy art off of etsy (tysm for this cursed and dangerous knowledge), so the flower decal is from a pack of Wildflower pngs and the arrow scene break marker is from MEGAARROWSVGBUNDLE which always makes me laugh when I see it in my folders. [but c'mon, I read and intend to bind a lot of Clint fics. having a wide selection of arrows is critical].

the text font on this one is 11pt Leelawadee, because it felt like it fit the casual vibe of the fic, and then the cover page font is Lucida Handwriting, 20pt font

this fic clocks in around 75k words and the A5 size book ended up at 224 pages (58 sheets)

[citycanvasbindery]

Book 4!

so, book 4 is *also* an anthology (you may see many of these from me in the future, I find them particularly Delightful)

there I was, rifling through @kangofu-cb's AO3 while on my way to find the text that would become book 5, when I realized hey wait a sec. she's got a bunch of great ~10k winterhawk oneshots I could put together into a book!

So I did.

The fics are sorted from shortest to longest, and total about 40k words (A6 size, 195 pages, 25 sheets). The font used is Book Antiqua, 10pt for the text and 20pt for the title page. The swoopy flourish is from the stock selection available in affinity publisher.

This is also the book where between copy 1 and copy 2 I figured out how to finagle my printer to print the title + author on the spine, which I'm very pleased with myself about (but I don't think the printing would go well on the embossed bits, so I had to switch up the actual cover page to do it)

[citycanvasbindery]

Book 3

now that copies of books 3-6 have all arrived to their homes, time for some bookposting! (and yes, you read that right, books 3-6 all kind of happened concurrently. high off my (relative) success with books 1 and 2 I immediately went overboard and started plotting binding fics by friends and for friends. rolled up to the post office like 'hello I have 4 packages of books going to multiple different countries 😃' and the worker at the desk very kindly helped me sort that all out <3)

so book 3 is an anthology of stories by the absolutely fabulous @safelycapricious! there's I think 24 different fics in this one for a total of ~75k words (A5, 280pages, 71 sheets). mostly DC, Marvel, and DC/Marvel crossovers, but this also includes one ATLA fic and several GOT fics because I have been absolutely sold on Safely's version of the Sansa/Oberyn/Ellaria ship

this was my first time making an anthology of unconnected fics and my first time making multiple copies of the same book (which is why all three are obviously Unique XD)

the first copy actually turned out pretty much fine! however, the font was slightly larger (14pt) than I liked once it was printed out on the sheets, so I resized the text (and then had to re-do the whole formatting of the table of contents again.) (hot tip do the ToC at the very end of your typesetting lest you have to redo it multiple times as you update the pages and then have to repeatedly fix the in-ToC formatting...)

the second copy I was happy with the text font size (11pt), and I was feeling good about it! except:

(how the fuck did I do that .jpg)

you may also note between copies one and two I figured out how to print directly onto the cover! this was a process I tested with book 4 since, as I said, I was working on all of these concurrently. like a normal person.

but! third time for this book was the charm! the third copy came out really nicely, the text block glued in very carefully straight, and I found the mushroom paper to print the cover on because I thought it would be fun :)

the third and nicest copy went to Safely, mr. slanty-block stayed with me, and the first copy with the slightly large text went to a friend who also loves Safely's stories

I didn't do anything fancy with the internal formatting on this one, but the font I used for the text was Lucida Bright and the font for the cover/title page is Gabriola because I think it looks nice

[citycanvasbindery]

Books 1 and 2!

So, similarly to Book 0, I wanted to start doing typesetting etc with something that I wouldn't be as upset if it turned out meh (or bad lol)

Book 1 is my fae!Clint series, which consists of a main story of about 10k words and two related stories of about 1k words each (so a total of 12k, which is a bit small for a book bind - this ended up at 81 pages, 11 sheets)

I added in the lovely artwork that @there-must-be-a-lock and @o-kaythislooksbad made for this series, and grabbed scene dividers from the stock vector pngs available in affinity.

For the cover paper I used a 33lb page from my pad of decorative paper - which was a bit too thin as a cover so that pad has been relegated only to inside end paper status from now on lol. The text font used on this one is Lucida Bright.

Book 2 is a little heftier - it's my Clint & Steve roadtrip fic that clocks in around 30k words (149 pages, 19 sheets)

I added in @noxnthea awesome watercolor illustration of the graveyard scene and grabbed some cool vector images of vintage-looking root/plant-like things from the stock feature for the title page!

The text font in this one is also Lucida Bright, though this is at 10pt font instead of the 11pt I used for book 1. The title font is Blackadder ITC, which I thought was a great match for the vaguely spooky vibe of this story.

I also realized after making this book that I should probably have some kind of at-a-glance indicator for what book corresponds with which story. So, I wrote the title on the spine with some paint-pen type things I picked up. Will not be doing that again, because it just looks like my handwriting and not any kind of cool calligraphy (plus I did it upside down LOL).

I'll probably remake both of these books in the future since I'm already so much better at everything than I was when I made these, but I'm pretty happy with them for first attempts!

[citycanvasbindery]

Book 0!

before I made a proper ficbind, I wanted to practice on something that didn't matter as much if it failed. since we were already midway through 2025, I decided to make myself a 2026 planner!

This is A5 sized, 139 pages (35 sheets of paper) all of the graphics are directly sourced from the 'stock' tool in affinity publisher, and the font is Bradley Hand ITC (which I've fallen in love with and will make more appearances in future books lol)

[also since this was the first ever thing - this is actually printed with regular ol' printer paper. you can see through the page on the last picture, which is why I switched to slightly thicker paper for everything after this]