A nice, shiny rebind of The White Road, by @perverse-idyll! Also in honor of @harryjamespotterweek, for today's trope prompt of "enemies to lovers", which Snarry always is! 😉 One of my favorite fics of all time, and beloved by me for many, many years!
It's not much different from version one. Same leather, same book corners! The most important difference to me is I got some thicker chipboard which holds the thicker leather much better than the previous chipboard I used. I also used a black paint pen for the cover and spine titles, rather than "rosewood" as I used previously.
This version is much neater and sturdier and I'm very pleased with it! Though I definitely foresee myself rebinding this time and again as my skill improves. A gal can never have too many copies of her favorite fic, right?? 🥰
Disclaimer: still new at this. Please don't judge me. And also this is just what I do and really when it comes to some of the smaller details, that's personal choice and stuff you'll decide once you get going and know what you wanna do with it!
Step 1.) Signatures will print 4 story pages on 1 copy paper. I decided more or less early on to do signatures in sets of 20 pages. Though I know to print it by 20s, I still write it all out to try to keep track as I go. I write the total number of pages from Acrobat in the corner, then sort out each signature like so:
Obviously we won't always get a number divisible by 20, so the last signature might be off. But this tells me which pages to set when printing, and how many signatures I should have at the end.
Step 2.) CTRL + P aaand these are my printer settings:
Page Sizing & Handling set to "Booklet." Make sure booklet subset is set to "both sides." Binding: Left. Orientation: Portrait. Then up at "Pages to print" I click "Pages" and set the first one from "1-20" then once that gets to printing I go CTRL+P and set the next signature for "21-40" and so on and so forth.
Step 3.) I grab each signature when they finish and set them aside and group each signature together and easy to tell apart.
Helpful hint: I can tell a signature is done when one side has 2 page numbers side by side that go together (i.e. 68 & 69.)
Another helpful hint: you might need to do a few trial prints to make sure everything prints the way you like. I'd recommend choosing a shorter fic, between 3 and 10k maybe, and making a test signature to see that the font is how you like, what size you want to cut it to, that you're good folding it, etc. Also to get a feel for how to print it and make sure the print settings are right! That's what I did when I first started (I used my own fic Orange Blossoms as a trial run, then In My Veins In My Blood for a slightly longer one.)
Step 4.) Fold! I have bone folder & creaser tools I use for this. Have the side by side pages (i.e. 68 & 69) face up and fold them into each other signature by signature. You should be able to, once folded, flip through and see the pages all in order!
Step 5.) Smush the folded signatures. I keep them stacked and place some heavy books on top of them for a few hours. They need weight on them to settle down and flatten out a bit. You want to get it as tight and small as it's gonna get. I usually keep them under weight whenever I'm not working on them, but I give them a few hours under the books before moving onto the next step.
A note: I try to pick out my endpapers as early as possible and fold and cut and smush them along with the rest of my signature stack!
Step 6.) Cut paper. My copy paper is 8.5 x 11 inches. I know that how my signatures come out, the size I like to cut them to is 5 x 7.5. So with my paper cutter I cut one end down to 8 inches, then the other end to 7.5 inches, then lengthwise down to 5 inches. Again, whatever size works best for you, do that! Just make sure you know what the size is so you can keep it even across the board. (Or if you're like me: as even as you can get it.)
Step 7.) If I have time between cutting and poking, I smush them again, but if not I go right to poking holes!
Or...well, measure first. First you take one signature and mark on the edge where the center is. Then you make 3 marks on either side of it, spread out evenly. (I usually mark an inch apart for each mark outward.
Then you can stack the signatures and use a ruler and mark down so each signature has 7 marks for where you'll poke the holes.
Step 8.) Actual hole punching. I keep cardboard boxes around and use those to cut on top of. I grab a stretch of cardboard and place my signature unfolded on it and use an awl to poke a hole at each point I marked.
Step 9.) I like to give them more smush time before stitching, but after the holes you can stitch them. For this...I give you this Sea Lemon video: How to Stitch a Text Block for Case Book Binding. This is the method I use. I prefer unwaxed thread (I specifically use one I ordered from Hollander's) and I prefer to use a curved needle. I also use clamps to hold my "to do" pile of signatures together while I work, but that's because I like to stitch while laid out in bed or on the couch watching true crime videos LOL.
Not going to lie: stitching the text block is my favorite part. I find it very soothing! (Even if I'm watching true crime while doing it.) (Though for this one I was watching Wendigoon instead...weird/creepy stuff is just as fun as true crime ig 🤷♀️)
Note: a lot of sources I found have you glue the endpapers towards the end, but I prefer to stitch mine into the text block. I favor pretty sturdy endpapers, which is good since I basically have to do a row of stitching them alone, which might be too much stress for thinner paper.
Step 10.) yep...time to smush those signatures again!
Step 11.) Once they're pretty smushed, I do some gluing. I like to use headbands (which is decorative) and then you need to put down book cloth for extra stability. You need enough bookcloth to go down most of the spine, and a little bit on either side of the papers. Then you let it all dry while you work on the case, which I'll show you in Part 3!
I use PVA glue (I use Lineco brand which I ordered from Amazon) to put it all down. Normally I only glue down the spine, but for whatever reason I also 1.) used excess of the headband that I glued around and then I glued the bookcloth to the endpapers instead of leaving the excess out to glue down to the case later. Oops. Guess we'll see how that goes.
Also, while I didn't get a picture of it...
Step 12.) SMUSH. I put wax paper all around it so the glue wouldn't stick to anything else, then I stuck them back under weight. I've never smushed them again once I got to the gluing but I discovered the magic of wax paper a little late in the game last time, so we'll see how this goes!
My second binding had to be another of my favorite fics, which is this lovely work by @writcraft!
I used the Cricut brand faux leather and LET ME TELL YOU, this was much easier to use than the leather used on The White Road. Thinner, lighter...cut and glued like a dream!
The titles on this and the other 2 I bound came about in the most ridiculous way. My idea was to use my Cricut Joy to create stencils to then write/paint the titles on.
Well, scratch that. My original plan was to foil them on. But the Cricut Joy is too small for that. My next idea was to create stencils. So I used cardstock. However, that's still a bit flimsy and in my test runs I was using double sided tape to stick them down.
But THEN I bought a sample set of Cricut vinyl. So my next thought was to use vinyl. However, the vinyl letters weren't sticking down to the leather very well, which I feared.
But do you know what DID work?
Using the VINYL as a stencil. More surface area on the vinyl made it stick down better. It was good enough for what I needed it for, anyway! So I stuck the vinyl down where I wanted it (on the covers and the spines) and then used acryllic paint pens. Google research assured me they'd be fine for faux leather, but there was still a bit of bleeding. Less bleeding with the vinyl stencils than my cardstock stencils. So I left the vinyl on until the paint dried, then peeled them off. Works well enough for now!
Besides, we're not supposed to judge books by their covers, right? 👀
All the title pages were made in Canva! I'm extra fond of how these turned out!
It took a few tries, but I got there! My first ever fanbinding had to be one of my favorite fics: The White Road, by @perverse-idyll. Truly, I love that fic so much. (You can see my ravings about it here.)
After much trial and error, I finally have a useable, not super embarrassing copy to show! It's still not perfect. The leather I got, while pretty, is too soft and not easy to work with. By the end I had to cede to a bit of unevenness and weirdness if it would only for the love of Merlin stick to the dang chipboard. (My partner did have the idea of trying it on thicker chipboard, which I might do, if only because I have a seriously alarming amount of this type of leather.)
Also: leather was probably not the best thing to start with, but I'm a Taurus and we are cursed with stubbornness and a love for luxury, so what can I say?
Oh and the acryllic paint was a real pain in the backside on this leather specifically. (The other leather I used on other bindings went slightly better, but holy moly does this leather personally hate me, personally.) (It's faux leather, btw, it can't even say I killed it's mother or anything!!)
So basically: super soft leather does not cut easily, does not glue down easily, nor does it accept my paint pens easily.
But it's still a pretty leather, I must say. And! At least it's like...existing. That's pretty cool!! And I made this with my own hands!! I put all my time and effort into creating a bound version of one of my favorite stories of all time???? How is that not mega-awesome????
Some extra pics of my very sorry product. (I should stop being so mean to myself, cuz like...I'm still a novice, this isn't half bad!! And I like DID THE THING!!!! That's huge!! Things don't have to be perfect, right??) (It has CHARACTER.)
One day, when I've honed my skills, I'll rebind this one. This fic is much too beloved to me to not want a pristine copy of it! But I'll always hold this one near and dear to my heart, as well. As the first. As the start of my journey. And as one piece in a long history of loving this ship. (And also being a PI fangirl.)
Disclaimer: still new at this. Please don't judge me. And also this is just what I do and really when it comes to some of the smaller details, that's personal choice and stuff you'll decide once you get going and know what you wanna do with it!
This is the most...personal/particular part of the whole process! A lot of what I do here is making stencils with my Cricut Joy.
1.) I go into Cricut Design Space, start a new project, and throw down the title and author name. I know my machine is small and my mat is 4x6 inches so I make sure the font fits within that space.
2.) Select a font and size...Not gonna lie, Cricut Design Space has very...frilly fonts. It's hard to find fonts that are dramatic enough that I also know will cut the way I need it to.
I have to do this twice, once for the cover and once for the spine. The spine will obviously need different dimensions!
3.) Then I cut out a bit of permanent vinyl, then load it up on my mat, and run it through my machine!
4.) Once that's done, I cut around the title and name so I can better see the size and decide where best to stick it.
5.) then I peel and stick!
6.) From there, I choose a paint pen I like (for this I used copper) and I trace the stencils. (I also had to use a Cricut tool to pick out some of the vinyl that got stuck between letters)
7.) I give it a few minutes to stay in place and dry.
8.) then: peel!
9.) I also use a Modge Podge spray to protect it.
10.) Once it's all dry (or in this case, I got impatient and did this part while waiting for the paint to dry lol), I pick out my book corners and fit them around the corners and hammer them down!
And that's done!
I'm no pro or anything but hey...I can make a book! 😁
Disclaimer: still new at this. Please don't judge me. And also this is just what I do and really when it comes to some of the smaller details, that's personal choice and stuff you'll decide once you get going and know what you wanna do with it!
I don't have pictures of the initial measuring and cutting because this part is the most finicky for me.
1.) Measure & cut chipboard. The case needs to be slightly bigger than the text block, and I had to rewatch this video by Sea Lemon a few times to get my measurements sorted. Honestly, my brain hates numbers so I'm not gonna bother redoing all the math to tell you what measurements I used 😂 Just know I spent way too much time looking at my measurements, rewatching the video, and trying to decide how large each section needed to be. I marked out the front and back cover on the chipboard, then measured the width of the textblock to cut out the spine.
2.) With my chipboard cut out, I grabbed my leather, which is what I use as book cloth. I do not recommend this for people, leather is soooo finicky to work with. Especially the leather I chose for this project, which is pretty thick and requires extra work. BUT ANYWAY I turned the leather side down and laid out my chipboard and measured it out. I needed one inch of extra cloth on all ends. So I marked one inch along all the edges of the leather, and marked where my chipboard should go. I also needed a quarter inch between the spine and each cover, so I marked that out. I used a pencil to mark the cloth, but then as an extra step I laid down washi tape to have a better visual of where my chipboard needed to go.
3.) I brushed PVA glue on the chipboard, then laid it down on the leather in my marked sections. THEN I spread wax paper over it, and stacked weight on top of that. It takes about a day for the glue to dry so I just left it there.
This is what I had when it was all dry!
4.) After that, I had pulled off the tape and marked where I needed to cut the excess leather off. Remember: one inch on all ends! Then I used my knife to cut the leather.
5.) More PVA glue on the leather edges, more wax paper on top, then weight.
As I said, this leather is pretty thick and won't stay down with the glue, so I had to get it even and press it down and very quickly slide a book overtop to hold it in place. I had to do this on both ends, then had to finagle it a bit to flip the top and bottom edges down, then get THEM weighed down. NOT FUN. (The leather is so pretty though, what can I say.)
Anyway yeah another day for this to dry!
6.) Time to glue in the text block! I grab the case and the text block, put them over a stretch of wax paper. I also put wax paper on the opposite side of the endpaper I'm going to glue to protect the other pages.
7.) With the textblock positioned within the case, I painted PVA glue on the endpaper and closed the cover over it and pressed down. Then I peeked in to make sure it was all positioned to dry properly. then I flipped it over to glue the other endpaper to the back cover. I made sure the endpapers were neat and tidy within, then closed the book with the wax papers still inside to let it all dry! No gluing the spine!
Someone asked me to chronicle a fanbinding project a while back and now that I'm in the starting stages I figured "oh yeah I should do that!"
Disclaimer: still new at this. Please don't judge me. And also this is just what I do and really when it comes to some of the smaller details, that's personal choice and stuff you'll decide once you get going and know what you wanna do with it!
Anyway current project: A Choriambic Progression (one of my faves!) (I'm also doing In Between Days at the same time but I'm further along in that one so it's not a good one to really show.)
Step 1: Gotta save the fic! I'll say ahead of time how I do this with AO3 fic, even though A Choriambic Progression isn't on AO3. With that, I go to Download > HTML. I've found that way will copy over all the formatting whereas the other ones didn't for me. Then I open the HTML file and copy paste into Google Docs.
Instead with A Choriambic Progression I just went to the Wayback Machine link and copy/pasted all of that.
Step 2: I do my page setup before fixing the body of the work, so I inserted a few pages above the work. I consulted a few books on hand to decide the layout. Page 1 is a simple title page:
I know when I print, odd numbered pages will show up on the right and even numbers will be on the left. So when I first open the book, the simple title page will be face up.
Step 3.) Which means for Page 2 I do the copyright page:
I temporarily removed my actual location for this, but: I made a name for my bindery. Most I've seen have the location of the publishing company, so I have my location in that section. Most copyright pages vary in the setup and even some information, so I borrowed what I liked! A lot have like "First Printing: Date, Second Printing: Date" so I list where all I've found the work, plus when I'm binding it. Even though it's July right now, I figure most of my work on this will be in August so I put August 2023 for that.
For ISBN I usually will put AO3 ID: and the work ID #. Since this was originally posted to Ink Stained Fingers I used Ink ID instead and it's ID # (which is 21???? Very cool.) Also since this fic is old and not really anywhere else, I had to do my best guessing on the date, which as best as I can figure was sometime 2004? And the print line for funsies! Though I don't think I'll do more than this one printing of it, but who knows!
Step 4.) Images in Canva. Which is just....me creating whatever icons and images I want to use in Canva, which is at least a title image. In Canva I opened an Instagram Post sized template. I threw in the title + artist. I had no idea what sort of art I wanted, so I just typed in "magic" and found this crystal & plant art I liked. I fixed up the font how I liked and then went to Share > Download > check Transparent Background > Select Pages: 19 (to just save page 19) > Download.
I also went into another Canva project for smaller images that i call "icons" to make my bindery icon and also a simple image I want to have at the top of the first page and downloaded both of those.
Step 5.) Back in Google Docs aaaand....I knew I'd need some pages before my title image so on Page 3 I added the "archive information" (which is where I'll normally pull the info from AO3, but I did the same basic idea here.)
Then Step 6.) I inserted another blank page (CTRL + Enter) and on Page 6 I went to Insert > Image > Upload from Computer and added my title image. Below it I added my bindery icon and spent over fiddling with it to get it properly centered. (It never wants to center correctly.) Iirc I went into Format > Align & Indent and played with "center" and "increase/decrease indent" until it behaved itself.
Step 7.) CTRL + Enter for another blank page. Then I make sure the start of the fic is on an odd page (though I can always fix this later in Acrobat.) I inserted my cute lil story icon above the start of the story:
Step 8.) I realized I had a problem in that I did all this setup BEFORE setting my font. So I had to CTRL + A to select it all and set it to Times New Roman 16, which I know will print in a way I like.
Next I'll say, I like to keep the space between paragraphs in an ode to fanfic-y ways. But I also like indented paragraphs. So this is a personal choice, but with everything still selected I went to:
Format > Align & Indent > Indention Options > set Left & Right to 0. Then select Special Indent > First Line > set to .5.
THEN I had to go back and fix my title, copyright, and archive pages, but it's less annoying to do that than it would be to try to highlight over 300 pages to do this for JUST the fic. I later added some extras (such as the poem at the end, the author's note, and some review/recommendations for the fic that I wanted to format differently.)
....Basically just figure out how you want to format it.
Step 9.) CTRL + F. This fic was a NIGHTMARE to fix up, ngl. I did all of this last night but basically...I had to find all the scene breaks by going CTRL + F and searching "***" so I could replace those with a horizontal line (Insert > Horizontal Line.) But a few places had tildes instead so I had to do an extra CTRL + F: "~~~~" That wasn't so bad.
The bad part was realizing how much had to be italicized. Regular italic words had a "*" on either side, while correspondence began and ended with an underscore. So I had to CTRL + F: "_" and then highlight and italicize all the letters. Then CTRL + F: "*" to find all the italicized words of which there were like 200. Very tedious.
Step 10.) File > Download > PDF Document
Step 11.) I opened the PDF in Adobe Acrobat for my final stages. Mostly here I make sure all of the pages are in an order I like and make sure all of my pages that need to end up on the right are odd numbers. And if not, I can go to the sidebar on the right and go to "Organize Pages"...there I can reorganize or add blank pages where needed.
Step 12.) Page Numbers & Headers! Again this is personal preference but I can show you how I did it and you can make your own decisions about how you want to do it.
Close out of Organize Pages. Then from the sidebar I chose "Edit PDF." Then at the top toolbar I click on "Headers & Footers" and select "Add."
For me, I wanted the title as a header, and I wanted to insert page numbers. So in "Header Center" I wrote the title and in "Footer Center" I clicked on "Insert Page Numbers."
Then because I want my page numbering to start on Page 3 (I like to start numbering at the Archive Information page) I click on "Page Range Options" and in "Pages From:" I changed "1" to "3."
Note, if you fiddle with the pages later on and reorganize or add new blank pages, Adobe won't adjust the page numbers for you, which is why I make sure my pages are all in order first.
Step 13.) My least favorite part is REMOVING headers & footers from pages I don't want them on. So on all blank pages I took off the title & page number. I took the title off of the Archive information and the Title Image page. I took the title off of the "Recommendations" pages later on, too. It's not only tedious but Acrobat likes to be difficult about letting me select the page numbers so it takes a few tries of me getting the page just so before I can select and delete the page number.
Anyway at that point it's ready to go so I make sure to save it to my Fanbinding folder and next up I can print! So...we can do printing & page folding and maybe page cutting in Part 2.
