we're baaaaaack. It's been a hot minute since I've made anything and I've had this partially done as a typeset for a while so I decided to commit!
Flu Game by @ohhgingersnaps is a Stardew Valley, Sebastian x OC (Ava), hanahaki fic and let me tell you I love it!
This was my first time doing a two page spread for the title page and I am HYPED with how it turned out. I also enjoyed making part of the flyer in the clinic about hanahaki.
As always, the use of Fall Out Boy lyrics/songs as chapter titles gives me so much life 😌
hand foiled on dusk duo with a spine in graphite colibri. Broke out my incredibly rusty Japanese to get the stroke order juuuust right and in the end it’s the Roman letters that wobbled 🤣 and for the endpapers, some luscious red chiyogami. the book is a “false bradel” which is a structure I definitely want to try again!
The fic is my kaiba brothers drama, Jishin Kaminari Kaji Kyoudai <3
Welcome to my recent fixation: book-making!
I have been following instructions from Sue Doggett's Book Arts while navigating secondhand materials. All of the fabric, paper, and twine comes from the thrift.
Here is a recent rebind of a thrifted paperback of Circe. I went for a color scheme that felt more spooky and Day-of-Dead-like. The cover is entirely hand foiled. Bookcloth used is faux leather from Hollanders.
Another jayvik book, completed! This is the incredible motion on a circle, by @runesick. Stunning artwork by @marika-misc, who kindly granted me permission to include her art <3
As always, crafty chatting + more pics under the cut!
Whereeee do I even begin with this fic oh my gosh. The worldbuilding is PEAK. There are so many fun things that rune does with the structure that convey the strange, otherworldly, in-between space of the arcane. And the jayvik? AHHHHH. THE YEARNING! THE GRIEF!!!! It's both cosmic horror and sweeping romance at its finest. It's so, so good. I left a comment that was literally *checks notes* 2,000 words??? LMAO. Thank you rune for reading my yapping! I just had to bind your fic; it's been living rent-free in my mind for months now.
Some fun design things! There are a few sections in the second chapter that are written in the style of a screenplay, so I mirrored that in the typeset :3 For font, I went with Courier New, which is (I believe!) the standard for screenplays, and also changed up the justification for the paragraphs to be left-justified.
I really love the resulting effect--the chapter this happens in is about (spoilers aha) Jayce getting tossed into the metaphorical basement of the arcane, and because he's not technically supposed to be there, he's kind of only...partially rendered. But he's also literally aware that he's a construct, which is BONKERS and so delicious, narratively speaking. All that to say, I really wanted to convey that feeling of unreality, and I feel like the stark contrast between the two fonts really helps with that!
The title page was also super fun to design! After Viktor gets spat back out of the arcane, his face kinda splits into a thousand different after-images. I thought it would be really neat to convey that somehow, along with the general idea of motion as named in the title:
I liked the effect so much I did it for the cover text as well! This was my first time using printable canvas and gosh is it a game changer. For the cover artwork, I used Vasily Kandinsky's Several Circles and flipped it around so that that the title would fall in the black part of the big circle:
My bindery logo falling right in the middle of the orange circle was a happy accident heh, but it's one I'm quite pleased with :3 This was one of those designs that sort of fell into place the moment I found the artwork--it just felt right.
This was also my first time making paper endbands! I used the same paper for both the endbands and the endpapers and love how it brings it all together.
A million thanks again to rune for letting me bind their work, and to marie for letting me include her artwork! I had so much fun with this bind, and this is legit one of my favorite fics not just in arcane fandom, but also just in general. I'm so so happy to have it on my shelf! Here it is once more, for the road <3
Another wonderful story by @sticksandsharks. Thank you for the kind permission to bind your work.
Materials used
Case Boards - grey board 1mm
Spine stiffener - cardstock
Covering material - book cloth (blue)
Paper onlay - chiyogami paper
title - gold foil (hot stamped)
Inner book
Text block - Schleipen fly 05 (115gsm)
Endpapers - coffee paper (120gsm)
Endbands - linnen core (10/3) and chiyogami paper
Format: ~ 9,8cm x 13,8cm
Read about the process and some trouble shooting here
Continuing the Asian diaspora childhood essentials series (I have a bunch of other items designs planned too hehe)
✦ Wrap cover design, unfortunately the math was not mathing this time so it's not a perfect even symmetrical wrap cover 😭
✦ used yellow and red book cloth, cut it out into pieces first and ironed the HTV design on, before using masking tape to held it all together and glue it onto the book cover
✦ Since the Jungle Book features a tiger in their story, it seemed like the best fit for this recasing hehe
This anthology took me a looong time to figure out, first composition-wise, and then the textblock had to wait for some month while I figured out what I wanted to do with the cover. ⚔️👒
💚 My main idea was GREEN, because I wanted to collect my favorite Zoro/Luffy pieces (about being deeply not normal about each other and also about inappropriate use of Gear 5) and use different Japanese woodcuts for each piece. The fancy linework in the typeset was inspired by @swordsmans's style.
💚 The endbands are a random assortment of greens, and the cover is hand stitched on nice emerald green linen. The feel of the book in my hands is well worth my poor pricked all over fingers (I am very new to any kind of embroidery).
"Harry Potter, returning member of the Oxford University Boat Club, has two goals for the spring of 2005: beat Cambridge, and beat Draco Malfoy. Perhaps not in that order."
This has to be one of the most creative and meticulously researched fics I have ever had the pleasure of reading. If you haven't read it yet, don't walk— run! Citrusses is an absolute genius, and kindly gave me permission to bind her masterpiece.
The cover of this bind is made out four different shades of Allure bookcloth cut by my Cameo 4, and the centerpiece is printed and hand foiled. The banners were machine foiled in gold and black with hand foiled rose gold shading. The endbands were hand sewn with Gutermann silk thread.
You can find more pictures and information about my process under the cut.
The amount of inspiration this fic gave me was overwhelming, and Citrusses' writing fully immersed me in the world of competitive rowing. While designing this bind, I was struck by the sheer wealth of Oxford rowing memorabilia available to me. I settled on this 1929 illustration from an official publication on the Oxford and Cambridge Centenary Boat Race for the cover.
"How hard could it possibly be?" I thought, foolishly. The answer was HARD, but I'll get into that later.
Due to the wealth of design options, I believe that this may be the best typeset I have created to date. Thanks to the help of my friend @tsurashi-bindery, I was able to learn the basics of InDesign (kicking and screaming all the way). There will be spoilers in the text of these photos, so try not to read them if you haven't finished the fic!
For the title page, I modified To See the Crews in Training by Charles Pears (1930). I believe that this was part of a series of advertisements for the race in the London Underground.
For the chapter headers, I redrew the crest from an Oxford Oars, Flags, and Arms postcard, presumably pre 1914. I also had some fun creating a mock email using La_Temperanza's How to Mimic Email Windows on Ao3. Cormac's email makes me laugh every time I read it, and Citrusses provided an appropriately pompous subject.
I also had lots of fun editing the oars from the official OUBC logo to serve as dividers and decorations for the page numbers.
Additionally, I got to edit a full newspaper page for the fic! I was very excited find an opportunity to slip Leyendecker's The Finish (1908) in.
The fic ended beautifully, so I wanted to include one last element at the end to capture the atmosphere. I settled on L'aviron (1932) by Milivoj Uzelac. It makes me feel as though Harry and Draco will continue rowing together long after I've closed the book.
I of course had lots of fun sewing the headbands, and got to do it with not one but TWO copies!
Things got tricky when I had to recreate the cover. I had a poor understanding of how vector images worked, and ended up having to redraw it three times. Once I finally cracked and taught myself how to use Illustrator, the program crashed...and I had to redraw it a fourth time!
I set the vector to cut on my Cameo 4, and I assembled the pieces together like a puzzle on my Silhouette mat. I used Allure's indigo, skylight, white, and black bookcloth in the process. I will be making a tutorial video on this method, so I will keep it brief here.
I also cut a piece of bookcloth to 8.5"x 11" and fed it through my inktank printer to print the center design. I then cut it out using the print and cut feature on my Cameo 4. Both of these methods were a first for me, and they were very scary!!
To be perfectly frank, the foiling was a nightmare and I don't want to get into it. I machine foiled the gold, and then foiled black lettering on top of it. I foiled the rose gold shading by hand, and then foiled a thin black outline along the edge of the banners to make them stand out more.
I hand foiled the spines (because I'm scared of measuring), painted the exposed board (to hide any gaps in the inlays), and used transfer tape to lift my design from the Silhouette mat and onto the cover.
One more fun detail— my copy and the author's copy are sisters! The dark blue and the light blue are inverted on the author's copy, making it distinguishable from mine. This is the first time I have made an author's copy for a fic, and I was admittedly incredibly nervous. I always worry about what authors will think of my work, but Citrusses gave me an incredible amount of encouragement and support throughout the process! Thank you for trusting me with your precious fic!
This story is a work of fanfiction and can be read on Ao3 for free. My bind and typeset are for personal use only and not for sale or profit. Keep fandom free!
