It's taken me more than a year to make this post. And it would have taken even longer, except I realized that what was holding me back now was wanting it to be perfect, which, let's face it, will never happen. So I am here to tell you about my friend @zulufic, about the amazing people of @renegadeguild, the Renegade Bookbinding Guild, and about fandom and community and how sometimes we really do get it right.
Zulu was my fandom and irl friend, and there is no good way to say this, she died of cancer a year and a half ago. She was family. She and my wife and I knew each other for twenty years, a significant part of our adult lives. Were at each other's weddings (her wedding to @belldreams was only a dozen people), travelled to cons, and helped each other move. She spent an unplanned week camping out in our living room one summer, as we torrented Stargate Atlantis, modded a House big bang from our living room couch, marathoned six degrees of actor separation media with us. Fell in and out of fandoms around each other, large and small. Witnessed each other's families and relationships and lives grown and change.
When I started fanbinding, I made her a pamphlet of her crackfic for Christmas. It was right around the time we found out she first had cancer. Surgery, chemo, and then we had another two years with her. She fell into another fandom, hard. I made her an anthology of her A League Of Their Own fic--all that she'd written at the time, at least. ("Would… you make a book of my fic?" she said when she saw my first casebound books. I never want to forget the way she said my name when she was asking me for something that was a foregone conclusion. "That was already the plan for Christmas," I told her.) I bound her rarepair House mpreg crackfic the next year, because that's what friends do. I didn't finish it until the spring--and then we found out the cancer was back.
She asked me for a favour over that summer. "Soooo… could you do something for me? Could you do another pamphlet, of this particular fic?" Yes, I said, yes I will. I will make you a pamphlet. I will make you TWELVE pamphlets. A HUNDRED AND TWENTY pamphlets, and more. (Spoiler alert, I did not make a hundred and twenty pamphlets, but I did make multiple copies of three.)
Here's the thing. She was on the prolific side, as a fic writer, and had been in fandom for decades. I wanted to bind more of her fic than I could possibly accomplish in time. I recognized there were finite amount of things I can finish while she was still here to see it, and that if I had tried to make this the only project I had, I would have collapsed under my own sadness.
That week, I said to a good fanbinding friend, I want to bind more of Zulu's fic, I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed right now. Her response: "Can I help? Do you want me to typeset something?" Me: (ALL THE EMOTION) "… yes. But also, I was thinking of asking the Renegade guild if anyone else would be bind a few of her fic, too, maybe a few quick pamphlets?" Her: "YES, do it."
I did it. I posted. She immediately started a spreadsheet organizing what I'd already bound, and to let other people sign up for things, and put herself first on the list. The fact that someone else was organizing for me (made a SPREADSHEET!) made me a bit weepy. By the time I went to bed an hour later, I think we had half a dozen people signed up to participate.
I should have been prepared for the full force of the Renegade Bookbinding Guild members, otherwise known as the inhabitants of the enabling server.
The next morning came. And a few more people signed up. I tentatively suggested that if anyone wanted to include a card or note and maybe some stickers for her wife and their kiddo L, it would be welcome. And people started asking me questions. Like, what fic does she like best? Where should we start? Can we make a care package? What does her wife need?
Knowing the people in the server, and their general kindness and enthusiasm, I should not have been surprised, I really shouldn't. It just hits differently when you're the one who's the recipient, you know? "I don't know why you're surprised," said another friend. "You asked us to help and we're helping!" And it wasn't an official guild project, just an incredible act of community and compassion. And immense enthusiasm and zero restraint.
I started asking some surreptitious questions of Zulu and Bell. I'd asked Zulu a few weeks before about granting blanket permission for anyone to bind her fic, and for the typesets to be shared. I casually said, "Sooo I mentioned this to the fanbinding group. If someone does want to send you something, can I share your address? And can I suggest they send cards/stickers to L?" (Yes, and yes.)
We started a separate thread in the Discord server to keep up with the planning. Some collaborations started to come up. I'll typeset from South Africa or southeast Asia or from next door in the next US state, you print and bind, we'll collect some of the American books for a mass mailing to Canada. I don't have time to bind, but I can contribute to shipping costs. I don't know that fandom, but I can take your typeset, and make a copy. I love that fandom but don't have time and materials, but I'll typeset if you bind. At this point, there were more than thirty people involved. New-old fandoms were discovered. Techniques and experiments grew.
I told Bell a little bit. She knew there were books coming. I didn't let her know the full scope, but I figured she could use something good to look forward to. Zulu said one of her goals was to finish all her WIPs before she died. (That hurt my heart. She almost made it! But even at the end, she got distracted by a new fic idea...)
The behind the scenes binding continued. There was negotiating over obscure fandoms, and exclamations over fic for niche favourites. A need for a great deal of baseball theming because Zulu wrote a LOT of ALOTO fic in the last few years. There were anthologies and pamphlets, and tiny books, and large chonks, and an entire collection of every drabble Zulu ever wrote in House fandom.
There was a 100-word hockey RPF drabble bound in a one-page folio with metallic foil details. There was a whole-fandom slipcased pamphlet set of her handful of Friday Night Lights fic. There were Buffy and X-Files fic unearthed from deep in her backlist. There were several bonkers-ambitious binds of her SMAUs, social media AUs of tweets and screenshots that had me throw up my hands and exclaim "how am I supposed to typeset this?"
There were obscure Canadian fandoms encased in the fanciest of marbled paper pamphlets, and a House fic about stolen lunches bound in a brown paper bag. A flower-titled ALOTO fic with a cover patterned like a seed packet. A Yuletide obscure movie fic in silk moire. Firefly fic with a marbled paper inset, and a Stargate Atlantis fic with a vellum dustcover. A crackfic five things fic with a metallic paper DVD on the cover as a Chinese stab binding, from a fandom that needed MOAR LENS FLARE. ("I am sure you know this, Luna," said the binder working on it, "but Zulu is really fucking funny." Yes, yes she absolutely was.)
I can't name every single book because there were more than FORTY of them, but I love every one of them and the care that went into them.
I told you Renegade goes hard.
We drove to nearby city to see Zulu and Bell in August, 2024. They'd just changed up her pain medication and she was having a good day. We had a good visit. I put the pamphlet fic in her hands myself. They'd told her in June that she should expect about a year at most. It would only be three months. That was the last time I saw her in person.
We moved up the projected mailing date from mid-October to mid-September.
We knew, over the September long weekend, when the group chat went quiet, that it wasn't a good sign. I'd kept up a steady stream of pet pictures and other small bits of news. As the summer ended, we had fewer responses from her, and were more likely to just get an emoji back. Morning glory flowers only bloom for a day, and they were blooming outside my back door. I started sending a picture of that morning's flowers to the group chat each day. (And cat pictures. Of course.) I don't know if anyone but me really cared about the morning glories, but it felt like something tangible to hold onto.
The first few envelopes and boxes started to arrive. There were cards and stickers and handknit slippers, and a science facts zine just for L. I told Bell, tell Zulu we love her. And that I'm not sorry I unleashed 30+ fanbinders on her AO3 account.
Bell: (lists off the books that had arrived.)
Me: Oh, so the group shipment from California isn't there yet. Plus at least three other packages I know about.
Bell: Holy shites
Several lovely people found my name in the acknowledgements of more than one fic, and sent me copies, too. (Twenty years in fandom together…) I cried.
We knew things weren't good when Bell emailed to set up a time for a video chat. A few days after the September long weekend, we talked to them face to face, to get the news that they were moving Zulu into hospice care the next day. It would be the last time we'd hear her voice. We knew it was coming, it just all went so much more quickly than expected. She died less than three weeks later.
(But take a look at the dates on the last fic on her AO3 account. In such typical fandom fashion, she was updating her last fic from her hospice bed. A direct quote from Zulu: "The most important thing once I'm there, of course, will be to sort out the wifi situation.")
So, timelines got bumped up by another week. There was a rush for mailing. One international package from Europe got returned to sender without leaving the country due to post office shenanigans, and had to make a return trip, too late for Zulu. The package from Japan made it. The big group shipment box was sent via overnight delivery. It was supposed to arrive on Tuesday. It showed up on Friday, the day that she died, after she was gone. But by that last week, I'm not sure how much Zulu would have taken in about it, honestly. Bell took it with her to supper that night with friends and family to open as a special treat.
There were more than forty books of all sizes all told, from more than thirty people, and I still have about four more in progress myself right now, though I'll never get to put them in Zulu's hands and see her grin and say "Aww, you GUYS…"
But we flooded her with books of her own fic. We deluged her family with her words and love.
The books were on display at her memorial service, along with the quilt that her ALOTO friends had made for her. Also, the jersey she got printed based on her own fic (such a dork, I say with the world's most affection.) The books were all over the front of the room, and it wasn't even all of them. Zulu's mom sent a heartfelt thank you card to be shared with the whole group. The memorial also included earl grey tea and shrimp (two of Zulu's favourites) and a video message recorded to her from one of the actors from A League of Their Own (which I am sure confused many people, but we knew what was up!)
The second group shipment arrived with me several months later, and at least one more book came to me in person at the Renegade retreat, and Bell has them all in a bookcase together. I still have a few more to finish right now.
And, Renegade being Renegade, a couple of people have eyed Zulu's AO3 account and said, "Well, we didn't manage to bind ALL her 350 fic… so far…" And I laughed until I cried, and I am still hugging you all right now Renegade, SO HARD. And you've left a legacy, and you've made a difference. There are no thank you's that are enough. The love is stored in the fanbinds.
I've asked anyone who wants to share what they made to tag it #fanbindsforzulu. If you want to see some amazing things, check out the tag. And if you want to read her fic, and if you want to bind it, she would have loved that, and I would love to see it, too. And tell your friends you love them.
Binderary, week three and four! Part of last week was occupied by non-bookbinding things, but I have titled books, cased in a few more things, and have reached the end of Binderary having more things finished than I started with, which was the goal.
I have put titles on some more books! I finally decided on endpapers for a text block I was waffling on! Experiments using a foil quill pen were conducted!
On the left, the stack of emotional support textblocks I started with. On the right, the pile of nine projects that are now all the way done. More pictures to follow, but some of the books need to make their way to their new homes first.
And here, on the left is the finished-or-further-than-I-started stack (eighteen books, including the nine complete projects, three that need titling, two textblocks, four stacks of signatures), and the emotional support textblocks I did not get to (eight more in various stages.)
(We're not talking about the accordion folder of pages that need folding, or the to-print folder on the computer. Shhh. Shhhh.)
This past week I have made paste, five cases, and found a cool box for my silk thread. I also printed two paper labels, foil quill templates for two books, and vinyl Cricut stencils for painting three more books.
Behold! Cases!
I also went to an arts and craft supply swap organized by local environmental organization, got rid of some things that weren't going to get used, and came home with a handful of ribbon for bookmarks, and a pretty tin to put all my silk thread for endbands in. (Yes, that chunk of reds at the back are out of sequence, but they're what I've got picked out for my next endband to sew.)
I decided to go for broke and case in three books at 11pm, and they're still pressing, but I think I've succeeded without any unforeseen consequences.
The to-title pile: ten books. Seven books need endbands, one book needs a case but I have aspirations of doing an inset with dried flowers, so that might wait until post-Binderary. One book needs the spine glued, and trimming, but I finally decided on endpapers a year after sewing. This week's progress: to be determined. We're already doing better than last year and the year before with no family health crises so far, knock on wood.
Binderary week one! Binderary is @renegadeguild's annual challenge month, like Nanowrimo or Inktober, but with fanbinding. I have sewed two pamphlets, three sets of endbands, made (and stencilled-splattered) three cases, and cased in the books, and attended three workshops.
(What did we learn in the endband workshop? We learned that Des makes endbands out of spite. And also a new tie-down method that I kind of love.)
(How many text blocks do I have that need endbands? Some. Some text blocks. A variable quantity. It depends.)
None of these were starting from zero, because my goal is to get down my existing project stack that was abandoned mid-Binderary last year when life went sidewise.
There was a minor case-related mishap with some water damage incurred during case splattering, but disaster recovery was accomplished, and I am pretty happy with how these three turned out. Titles still to be stencilled on later.
Binderary, let's goooo! Binderary is a month-long event run by @renegadeguild focusing on binding books and participating in workshops and demos (set your own goals and challenge level, like NaNoWriMo or Inktober).
My goal this year, as always, is to simply reduce what I jokingly refer to as the stack of emotional support textblocks, aka all my fanbinding WIPs. You can see the pile there (minus one I missed adding and found an hour later in another stack) as well as my file folder of pages to fold, mostly quartos (half-size books) and smaller. Also, an in-progress endband that got away from me.
Today's schedule brought a workshop safety talk from one of our resident medical professionals. Highlights included when to go to the ER, Don't Put Weird Shit On Open Cuts, Don't Hide Sharp Shit (Needles Will Hide Themselves), and any tool which moved independently of you is witchcraft and must be treated accordingly.
Today's progress: one textblock folded, two pamphlets sewed, and one endband finished.
All our workshops are run by members of our fanbinding community, and some of them are even on Tumblr!
Here’s the list of who’s running the week 1 workshops:
Beginner's Primer: Bookbinding Vocabulary and Parts of the Book: @silentsunpress
Workshop Safety: catz
Makin' the VIP Work for You!: @simply-sithel
Endbands (French Double Core): @celestial-sphere-press
Designing a Book in Affinity 3 (Beginner): @kate2kat
Typesetting in Microsoft Powerpoint: mahoganydoodles
Whether you are new to the world of bookbinding, or an aged veteran, join us for a month of binding fun! This event is all about community and learning, be it trying something new or refining existing skills.
No Registration Required!
Simply attend any or all of these workshops at your leisure.
All workshops will be hosted on Zoom. Zoom links will be provided in the Renegade Discord. A discord link is provided on the about page of our website.
Say It's Here Where Our Pieces Fall Into Place by Lirelyn @ginnymoonbeam
The fic is a MZS modern AU where Lan Wangji adopts A-Yuan, and no-one knows the Xian-gege A-Yuan is desperately missing is Wei Ying, the cute barista at the cafe Lan Wangji visits every weekend.
I finished this one up last-last Binderary in 2024 and it's been languishing in my queue ever since. No more!
The spine is Duo skarabäus bookcloth (one of the most dramatic color shifts, but also hard to photograph), and the lettering is stencilled gold acrylic paint. The cover paper is more printed lokta, and I ran the title down the spine-cloth on the front cover rather than trying to compete with the pattern. (Waves that could be clouds if you squint for the Lan clan reference, purple tones to go with the cloth.) The endbands are just plain sewing thread, and only the second time I attempted double core. A few wraps aren't quite where they should be there, but I do like the colour combo.
The typeset was made for me by @admiraltypress for the 2023 exchange, and look at that title font! And the formatting for texts, which is often tricky!
I did attempt to round the spine on this one, and it went... ok, but now I know that the cardstock I was using for the spine board was too thick, which was the cause of most of my woes getting it to fit into the case.
This was one of the fic I read around 2021 after finishing the series for the first time, and realized that despite what I thought I wanted to read (plotty post-series, casefic, etc), what I really needed was to also binge a significant amount of modern AUs where (almost) everyone lives. And this was a lovely one, full of so many feelings! I've enjoyed the chance to re-experience it as I bound it.
This is one of the fic that I typeset in 2023(!) and bound in 2024(!) and has unfairly been lingering in my draft posts since last summer. Life has been happening! More eventfully than I would like! (I did manage to finish and post a book for FFWAD at least. And took part in the Tiny Book Bang.) But I need to catch up a little bit on sharing some other projects.
This is such a fun MDZS fic by @thefeelswhale. "Full-time necromancer and part-time cam boy, Wei Wuxian, finds himself unexpectedly homeless. An enthusiastic patron comes to his rescue. Conversely: Immortal Cultivator Lan Wangji has been waiting a long time for his deceased husband to be reincarnated again. In retrospect, he should have anticipated that this is how it would go."
You can see my full rec and some more details of the interior shots in the typeset post.
The cover is patterned lokta mulberry fibre paper, and the title is a pasted-on label. If I'd been planning ahead, I might have gotten fancier and done an inset in the bookboard to put the label in, but I did not. Maybe next time I do something similar! I wanted a way for the title to stand out against the geometric pattern though, and this seemed like the best solution. The spine book cloth is the long-lamented (no longer produced) duo book cloth in brick, and the title and my press logo are stencilled on with a Cricut-cut stencil, and gold paint.
The endbands are fine! (But I've gotten a lot better in the intervening two years.) They're sewn with scrap 16/2 weaving cotton, and match better than I thought they would for all of that.
Bunnies. So many bunnies. So thematic.
(Me to my wife: "Does the rabbit in this piece of artwork from a century and a half ago say "I am an immortal cultivator who's been pining for thousands of years for my husband to be reincarnated, and also I like bunnies?" My wife: "Yes... yes it does.")
And now I'm onto working on projects for this year's exchange event (seekrit projects!) but there are a few more typeset pics under the cut.
Holy shit guys @gargoyleandgremlinpress bound my wangxian fic You are what you eat and look it is the cutest little book I have ever seen:
It is so tiny and so pretty. Look at the splattered edges and the chapter headings:
I’m a little embarrassed because the binder put so much more work into designing these chapter headings than I did in naming the chapters. (I always start off with one or two clever chapter names and then get stuck with naming the rest).
Anyway! It’s so smol
The font choice is so good! Look at the binding!
So amazing! I have decided to display it with my fossil and strange things collection!
But there’s more because Daemonluna also sent me this sweet little pamphlet of my fic When we were small
Look it has orchids on the inside cover as a nod to Lan Qiren having to give up his orchid collection to take care of his nephews (sob).
I’m so excessively blown away by these little books!
Renegade once again celebrated in our favorite fashion, by crafting books for fic authors we love! Thank you to all the folks out there who are writing fic! We appreciate you and all the joy, laughter, cozy times, raw emotional gutting, love, hope, chaos, and more that you have brought into our lives.
When I knew I was going to be sending a book to @deliciousblizzardshark for Fanfic Writers' Appreciation Day, I couldn't resist adding in a little pamphlet bind of another one of my favourites of their MDZS fic. TOTALLY different tone from the other book, this is a very lovely little heartfelt modern AU good uncle!Lan Qiren fic, from Lan Qiren's point of view. (Did I make myself a bit teary re-reading it to bind? Yes. Yes, I did.)
"The best things that ever happened to Lan Qiren were brought to him in the middle of the night by women with perms. First, his nephews, stricken with grief at the death of their parents, then Wei Ying, brought by a harried babysitter when his parents disappeared."
Pamphlet binds are so satisfying, and are practically an instant gratification project when it comes to the binding! I pulled out an orchid theme for the cover and some inside accents based on a reference to Lan Qiren raising orchids, and decided to run with it. Cardstock cover, some green crochet cotton to sew it all together, and a very light coat of finishing wax on the cover and we're done. (Not counting all the browsing of images, and ultimately deciding to find some creative commons photos of orchids and run through them through some filters to get the front and inside of the cover.)
No teeth in this one, just flowers and feelings. Happy FFWAD, @deliciousblizzardshark!
Happy Fanfic Writers' Appreciation Day! Every year, @renegadeguild members celebrate by sending copies of fanbound fic to authors, and this year, eldritch horror was on the menu.
This is a MDZS fic by @deliciousblizzardshark where Wei Wuxian was thrown into the burial mounds, and came back... different. It's an excellent blend of horror, humour, and romance, and I had so much fun with the typesetting and design for this. "How much teeth is too many teeth?" I kept asking several friends, sending more screencaps.
There are actually three copies of this book! I bound and typeset it for @misanthropiczombie as a surprise bonus gift fic in the annual Renegade exchange event, and then made both an author copy, and a copy for myself. Because of deadlines, I didn't have all three copies together at once, but it was supremely satisfying to stack up the two little chonks at once. And when your splattered edges go a bit blobby with red paint on a horror fic, it's not the worst thing. Progress pics and some more details after the cut...
The edges are splattered with some slightly watered down acrylic paint. Endbands were front-bead embroidery cotton on the first copy, and faux double core with silk thread on the second two, since in between the exchange and FFWAD, I got my portion of Japanese silk thread from one of Renegade's notorious group orders. (Group orders "save money!" And spiral to ridiculous proportions requiring extreme spreadsheets very, very quickly.) Endbands are truly the finicky touch that you probably won't notice unless you've made a book. But the thread is so SHINY! It looks so GOOD!
The cover and spine are stencilled with Cricut vinyl and acrylic paint. My copy has what we're going to call a distressed look to it. You can use acrylic medium as a base coat to get a crisper edge on the stencil, and I couldn't find any in the art stash, but we did have some gesso, which is used for prepping canvasses.
As it turns out. I fucked around, and found out. The paint REALLY likes the gesso and so does the stencil vinyl. So much that there were places where the paint came up attached to the stencil where the gesso went on a bit thick. But the edges were REALLY nice and crisp where I had a thinner coat of gesso. So I went with a thinner coat on the second book, and it turned out just fine. And the edges look great. On the teeth.
Today is Fanfic Writers' Appreciation Day (FFWAD), and @renegadeguild loves fic! To commemorate the day, we gift authors with handbound copies of their fic. As I posted earlier, I just kind of rolled a belated Christmas present for @zulufic into gifting it to her to match FFWAD's approximate date... but what better occasion to also do some bonus pamphlet binds of a few of her shorter fic? Pamphlet binding! A cardstock cover, a tiny bit of punching and sewing, and you're done! They are the equivalent of bite-sized, and I love them.
All three of these are A League Of Their Own fic. First up, Country Fair, a sweet little bit of canon-era romance.
Followed by a canon-divergent five plus one fic, Five Times Carson & Lupe Were Bros (And One Time Carson Was Lupe’s Wingman)
And finally, a little half-sized ficlet! A Glimpse of A Higher Life is a modern AU that's a classic meet-cute, where Greta and Carson both have a cat... the same cat. I HAD to bind this one, since Zulu had borrowed, in passing reference, an IRL architectural cat containment strategy from me for this one.
Happy FFWAD, Zulu! I am so lucky to have a long, multi-fandom, multi-year friendship with you online and off.
Sending this one out into the universe again, on the eve of fanfic writers' appreciation day. We lost Zulu to cancer a little bit more than a month after I gave her these binds, and it was the last time I saw her in person. I know she'd be happy to see her fic still circulating.
Tiny bookbinding in progress; gasp the textblocks are naked! June 2025. La petite mort by @howlingmoonrise
I made three copies of this ficbinding for the 2025 Renegade Tiny Books Exchange, and here are some work in progress pics! In this event one person typesets the text and another person (@daemonluna who I cannot tag for unknown reasons) makes the physical book and mails it to the typesetter for a gift exchange. I also made a copy for myself and for the fic author, yay!
As you can see in the first pic I printed two sizes, one very tiny and the other a slightly larger but still quite small. I figured I would send the author one that would be a bit easier to handle and read, though all three copies are very small because I love making very tiny books. Look at that PINK I love the hot pink text decoration.
These feature one of my favorite nerdy bookbinding choices, hooked endpapers, where the decorative paper at the front and back of the book are stitched to the rest of the pages. The "tape" through the spine (it's fabric) does the structural work that the endpapers do on most modern mass-produced books. Hooked endpapers show off the structural role of the tapes, for better or for worse lol! The endpapers pieces that go inside the cover to match are loose on the table in the second photo.
I originally put the tapes in backwards and had to awkwardly thread them back through later so the black part would be visible instead of the white paper backing. When I have them pressing under the corner of my paper guillotine they are still backwards but they are fixed in the last pic. Last pic is right after I did the decorative page edges, which was super fun and I give Luna brainstorming credit for that design choice.
HOLY SHIT THIS IS THE CUTEST THING THAT'S EVER HAPPENED TO ME?????? cannot overemphasize how tiny and cute and perfumed this fanbinding is, if i could hold it up like simba for the world to see i'd be doing it 24/7 i'm so emotional rn 😭😭💖💖💖
weeping and profusely thanking both @kulapti and @daemonluna from the renegade fanbinding guild!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS LOVELY GIFT I WILL CHERISH IT FOREVER LOOK AT THOSE LITTLE TINY PINK BATS AND THE OMBRE PAGES AND THE TITLE PAGE AND AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH 💖💖💖💖💖
Tiny bookbindings of La petite mort by @howlingmoonrise, June 2025.
This is my entry in the Renegade 2025 Tiny Books Bang! I was delighted once again to work with @daemonluna who made this very fun typeset. We both were extremely entertained by making as many hot pink accents as possible for this fic. Thanks to the author for agreeing to let us bind this work! WIP photos here. Pictured here are the three finished copies, the slightly larger (and slightly more legible) author copy plus two slightly smaller copies for myself and the typesetter. Luna and howlingmoonrise have already received their gift copies in the mail, yay!
The hooked endpapers turned out very nice on these. I have not done a longstitch like this before (that's the visible thread on the finished spine) and I will do that again for sure! Very cool result I think!
Materials: Verona rayon bookcloth, archival book board, scrapbooking paper, and acrylic paint for the covers. Cotton embroidery thread and pink seam tape for the endbands. More cotton embroidery thread, beeswax, and archival PVA for the structure and laser printed text on archival paper for the main textblock, plus fountain pen ink for page edge decoration.
The @renegadeguild Tiny Book Bang, one of my favourite events! I was delighted to get a tiny copy from @kulapti of my typeset of @howlingmoonrise's Barbie/Dracula fic, which I highly recomment for its pitch-perfect treatment of a pairing that epitomizes the best of crackfic.
Kulapti does gorgeous work, especially on such a small scale, and has better pictures above of the finished book than my snapshots, but I thought I'd include a few screencaps of the typeset that went into the book, too. The pink and black colour scheme was way too much fun, and I love how it carried over into the finished physical book, too!
