Dynastes Press

Bookbinder | DM for inquiries or commissions, my askbox is always open for questions | I fanbind for myself, but I don't sell them, sorry 💚 Check out my Etsy as well, and follow #dynastespress to keep up with my current projects

[sanktalinn]

Blood over bright haven by M.L. Wang

Commission for a friend

[a-random-fandom-friend]

Because of Re: Carmilla, I thought you all would enjoy my edition of Carmilla :

The holes go all the way through, the sides of the book are red, and on some pages the text is colored red just under the holes !

I was so happy when I found it in a little french bookshop specialized in queer texts ❤️

[missmists]

Last out of the press is Two of Hearts by DoctorMissy on AO3, a Good Omens Lucifer crossover story about reconciliation, family, and what it means to heal and be yourself.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22636954/chapters/54101374

This one almost didn’t make it into this batch of binds because I wasn’t done editing the typeset until mid February, the footnotes were a perennial challenge, but I got there eventually. Went with a silk book cloth for the biblical energy. This is also the most design heavy spine embroidery I have ever attempted, I got the tiniest thread ever and while full coverage took for bleeding ever it lays sooo smoothly it’s worth it, thank god I was out of red thread and had to go get something project specific (will buy more colors twas worth it.)

Huzzah for Binderary 2025! I hit my goal of 9 binds.

[teleportbooks]

Fanbinding - Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know

This is my last round of experimenting with bamboo strips, for now at least. For these books, I used bamboo for the spine, and attached them to hard boards for the cover. The string going through the cover boards follows the look of a stab binding, but doesn't actually go through the pages. Instead, the folded pages are sewn to the strings on the spine with a narrower thread, in a variation of the secret Belgian/crisscross binding. The spine ends up being very flexible; it can lie flat or even fold all the way backwards, and although it ends up feeling kind of "loose," it's actually pretty sturdy. I made a box for the set to give them some more stability when sitting on my bookshelf.

Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know features a couple of plot-relevant books, so I thought it made sense to use with a binding method that called attention to itself. Many thanks to @spockandawe for letting me use your typeset!

[mythrilthread]

necro elysium (yuck!!) by @mercyisms

A confession: I LOVE fics that use the Disco Elysium format, and The Locked Tomb is just the perfect fit for this type of AUs (and going over the top with book design). And this one is so so so good!

🫀 I knew I wanted to mimic the layout of the text in DE basically as soon as I finished reading and saw the gorgeous illustration by @smapis.

🫀 The cover is inspired by the description of the card, but instead of trying to recreate it exactly (and messing with glitter) I went for the same theme and the kind of DIY arts and crafts style project vibe. Hence my first buttonhole stitch binding, with the heart painted with chromatographic ink (the color is called Unicorn’s Tears) and inked it over in hot pink with a glass dip pen. I also painted the folds of the pages and filled in some of the frames (where the narrator is YOU).

🫀 The rest of the portraits are cropped out of the aforementioned gorgeous illustration, except for Jod’s, which is a photo of a black hole (presented without comment).

🫀 I always want to play with textures for TLT fics, so this time the cover is black felt over a pink gift bag with nice leather-textured pink endpapers, and the textblock paper is a gorgeous 125gsm half-cotton that bravely took everything I threw at it.

I had so much fun working on this 🥰

[orchidscript]

I finished my Coquelicots bind!

(Sort of)

It needs a few more finishing touches but I’m very pleased with how it’s turned out already — and it’s fully readable, so I can bring it with me and show it off 💜

You can read the fic, Coquelicots, on Ao3

[zhalfirin]

Full cloth binding with paper onlays

Materials used:

inner book text paper - Schleipen Fly 05 115gsm endpapers - Reflex Coffee Paper 120gsm endbands - linnen core wrapped with book cloth

case boards - 1mm grey board spine stiffener - cardstock covering materials - Duo bookcloth (brick) paper onlay - japanese yuzen paper

Format: ~A6

[runawaymarbles]

Fanbinding: Merlin Ambrosius, King of Carthis by @clotpolesonly for @merlinmausi (Renegade Bindery Bound Fic Exchange 2024)

This was my actual first attempt at edge painting. Attempt 1 was to do gold foil with a hair dryer, which worked on my tests on thicker paper, but absolutely did not work here. I think I sanded it off like three times, after gluing all the pages together by accident at least once. I ended up resorting to acrylic paint, with a layer of acrylic ink over it for extra shiny.

Title page was mostly done by the heat foil head for the cricut, but for some reason it didn't do the last couple letters, so I stole a foil quill from a friend and traced them. The cover is also a foil quill: I made the design on Illustrator based on a pattern I found, and then printed and traced it.

The story with the endpaper is that I got it in 2012 at Hollanders (in person, moment of silence.) I loved it enough that I have not used it in the, uh, 11 intervening years. I finally decided that this had gone on a ridiculous amount of time, and also, it looked great with the cover. Problem: that paper really wasn't intended to be pressed against itself. It got itself extremely stuck every time the text block was in the press, and I had to very carefully pry it apart with a bone folder. (Eventually I remembered to start putting blank pages in between.)

The cover is moire, with a very cool sort of wavy pattern that doesn't quite come through in these photos. It's incredibly trippy to work with though because it throws off my depth perception:

[thebinarybookbinder]

Just gonna leave this one here, this book better stay fiction

[besidekick]

Renegade Bindery Exchange 2024: Bind #1

2024 was my first year as a member of @renegadeguild and thus first time participating in their annual gift exchange! I ended up binding four fics for my giftee that I'll be posting over the course of the week now that said giftee has recieved them! The author also got her own matching copy of this bind!

A vintage paperback edition of Party Favours by howlsmovinglibrary (@wetcatspellcaster)

Fandom: Baldur's Gate 3

With this bind I tried to emulate some of my favorite vintage mid-century paperbacks in every way I could. Doing so felt only appropriate for a screwball-esque romantic comedy, plus I’ve been in love with the perfect portability of the mass market paperback for years now.

The front cover is adapted from a 1923 French fashion magazine—I replaced the text and added some tiefling horns to the lovely ladies.

This was my first ever attempt at painted edges, so unsurprisingly they aren’t perfect, but I take comfort in the fact that every flaw here is something I have also found in at least one of the vintage books on my shelf.

Aaand a couple examples of what it looks like inside (typeface is EB Garamond):

(also giftee, if you see this and want me to tag you, I'd be happy to!)

[runawaymarbles]

Emma by Jane Austen

Xmas present for @ivanhoe-dont-do-it

"I've never done a full-HTV foil cover," said I, "that sounds fun." And then I proceeded to waste like an entire square foot of vinyl with various fuckups, requiring emergency Joann shopping on December 24th.

[runawaymarbles]

Fanbinding: like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird by @monstrous-femme

This was my first experiment in edge foiling. This was my second experiment in edge foiling, but the first one that I didn't sand off completely and replace with paint. I did, however, sand it off at least 3x per side before eventually going GOOD ENOUGH and deciding it was ~thematically appropriate~ for it to be on imperfectly. Have some ideas about things to change next time.

This was also my first time using a foil quill directly on a cover: I drew the cover design like four times, then traced it into illustrator, then printed it out, then used that as a stencil for a foil quill, because Zephyr hadn't taken back the one I borrowed yet (😇). It went a lot more smoothly than I thought it would.

[pleasantboatpress]

Long time no post?

I made a photo album for one of my coworkers going on maternity leave. I really love the colours of this one, and the endpapers are STUNNING! (Do i have a paper hoarding problem? Maybe so) I also dyed the thread used for the stab binding pattern, so theres a slight variegated pattern to the thread. Unsure if i am ever going to attempt making a photo album again, i have dreams of using that screw punch on what ended up being only like 20 pages lol.

I found DAS's screw-post photo album vid invaluable, along with this blog post about the tortoise shell stab binding pattern.

Here's to hoping 2025 is more successful with me actually completing binds. God damn

[zhalfirin-binds]

WIP - Herbst im Mumintal

Finally I got around to do the last moomins book (moominvalley in november). It took me forever to decide on a leather and cover art but at last the leather is pared and on.

The darker parts in the picture above are from where I pressed the moist leather down with thick iron rulers (like 5mm thick!). I like to do that instead of paring to press down the edge of the leather (tbh a combination of paring and pressing down would probably give an even smoother result, but it's not a fine binding and this will do nicely) another up of this method is, that, if the rulers have been placed carefully, they create a nice guide of where to put the cover papers.

Before hot stamping the title I evened out the backside of the spine stiffener. This doesn't need to be done, but I don't like how the spine curves otherwise and I also wasn't sure if my title stamping would fall on the edge of the turn in. If it did, it ended me up with uneven pressure and could possibly ruin the stamping. To prevent that I picked a thin piece of cardboard the thickness of the leather cut it about 1mm more narrow than the spine stiffener (to avoid a visible edge on the covered spine in case there was the smallest bit of skew). I also cut the piece to even out a bit longer. so it covered a bit of the leather turn ins. I do that to cut the leather away and have a perfect fit for the cardboard piece to even out the leather. It's just way easier to cut the leather straight along the inset piece than trying to cut the inset piece the exact shape of the leather.

[satisfictionbindery]

Book 5/50!

'Pray For Us, Icarus - Atalan'

Fandom: Good Omens

This dang fanfic really does haunt me in the most beautifully painful way possible 😂 it's actually one of the fics that made me wanna start fanbinding honestly! Loved that there was even a playlist for it so included that as well for good measure! 💖

Slowly heading back into fanbinding, don't wanna jank my thumb because not only do I need it for binding, I need it for my uni work 👏😂

HOWEVER.. not how I planned for the cover to turn out even though happy with it 😂 long story short; thumb injury midway through the original cover made it a very slow process and my patience to get this made became non-existent 😂

Main take aways:

Gotta thank past me for having cut the boards already for this bind 🙏 also weeding this cover was A PROCESS but worth it!

I need to get me a bigger heat press in the future

Cream/ivory paper is stunning! Actually quite like how there's a mild ghosting from the other pages too!

[sneakingsuspicionbooks]

Finished my rebind of The Sirens Of Titan, the second of three Vonnegut rebinds I've been working on, and gifted to my dad along with the Player Piano rebind just this morning 🎉 This one was easier than the previous in some ways, due to having prior experience, and harder in others, due to relying too heavily on said experience (aka I got cocky). Hopefully the 3rd and last will go smoothest of all 🤞

[undefinedkosmos]

Bookbinding: The Secret Garden

Having been at this hobby for over a year now, I decided it was high time to make something I could share with people who aren't part of Fandom. Project Gutenberg to the rescue, with a copy of The Secret Garden, something that holds special meaning for me and my parents to whom I will be gifting the book.

This was my first time incorporating more than one color of foil in my cover designs. I'm really happy with the effect!

I used soie perlee silk thread for the hand-sewn endbands and jute fiber marbled paper for endpapers. With my favorite trick of using the same paper for an Oxford hollow for that peep of color in the spine when the book is open.

I recently was gifted a color printer, so of course I had to play with incorporating color in the typeset.

It was challenging to capture the nature of the cover colors in a still photograph, but I'm enamored with that colorshift as you turn the book over in your hands! All in all, I think this is some of my best work to date.