It slipped my mind that I kind of promised a making-of post - sorry @notabuddhist, who so kindly gave me permission to bind One of Many Great Fires for @pleasantboatpress!
I've tried to include as many making-of photos but sometimes i am just a shit photo taker so I am very sorry in advance.
Step 1: Stitch a text block and planning, Endband making
Anyone who knows me knows I love a good rounded book. I started rounding books from my third bind and haven't looked back.
I took a little while to get to this as it required colour printing and I don't have a colour printer at home. I finally got off my ass close to the end of Binderary and went to the printer I usually go to to print my coloured prints - luckily they didn't read my gay porn or ask me about it, though I've been getting increasingly pointed questions about what exactly i'm making.
glue round number 1 and trim with my guillotine, and then i take my trusty hammer to the spine to do some rounding.
So, okay, anyone who's read this fic knows it takes place on Vulcan. And i've seen enough imagery on star trek to know Vulcan is endless red sand and heat and oh boy, i feel hot just thinking about it.
I knew red would be a colour that fit thematically and I had recently found lovely marbled paper that really looked so much like the gas giant appearance of Jupiter but red. I then pulled out my trusty colibri cranberry bookcloth to do a couple of colour match checks- i love colibri and will never not recommend it.
Usually at this point, I do my endbands - and I did a simple two colour front bead endband because when i started this, that was all I knew how to do.
Step 2: Case making
I recently found out that what i usually do for books is called the square back bradel bind (though technically this is not square back), but you get my meaning.
Case is made, and then glued to bookcloth. Look at those crisp edges, yum yum. I'm generally a messy glue user, so you can see all the bits of paper stuck to the back of the half-done case, also with big F and Bs drawn on them because i never remember which side i want the front and back to be. The case looks pretty good with nary a glue stain. (I did a good job with glue management this time, phew)
Step 3: Decorative steps
My usual go-to is HTV because I'm not quite adept at other arty decorative methods like paint or usage of the foil quill. I decided to go with vulcan calligraphy on the back - with a river binding strip of marble paper in the middle. To make it look extra fancy, i made little silver HTV strips to border the river binding strip, though it warped a little from the heat because it was so ridiculously thin.
Step 4: Casing in
No photos of this because i'm usually hopping on one foot doing things on speedmode with PVA.
Shall pay tax with this photo - I love taking photos of my bookshelf and I really loved the burst of colour of the bookshelf after Binderary'23 was over.
I have made something like 21 case binds, but nearly 30 book binds (inclusive of coptic and stab) in total. that's a pretty decent number for someone who's only been binding for the last 9 months.
