It's Friday the 13th! Here, have a book completely unrelated to that:
It looks fairly straightforward from here, but this is a bind of @dietraumerei's wonderful Good Omens series, The Sprawl of Life. It's a canon universe, pre-season-2 South Downs Cottage fic, and I typeset it when I did because I'd just watched season 2 and wanted the fluffiest, sweetest, most slice-of-life thing I could think of and this was it. Seriously, if you have been personally victimized by the season 2 finale this might be the antidote you're looking for. Though admittedly some of the lines do hit a lot more bittersweetly now than they did when I first read it in 2019.
More pics under the cut! This one's got an unusual format, go have a look!
It's a dos-a-dos! My first one! Before I started making books I'd never even heard of this format, but I've been wanting to try it ever since I found it. It's hard to find stories that suit the format, though--they've got to be within a certain word count, about the same length, and related to one another, and they have to be a pair, not a three or four part story. They look super complicated without (I've found, anyway) actually being that hard to make. If you want to impress a non-bookbinder make one of these to show them; all my family were fascinated by it.
For materials, the floral cover is scapbook paper from Joann's (the fancy stuff that's very flexible and feels handmade) and the spine is Allure book cloth from Hollander's in the wisteria color. It's a perfect match for the lavender in the paper. I've only previously used the Lineco/Books By Hand book cloth and gotten good results, but my experience with that brand in general was that it's a cheap, readily available base for starting out, but there are wider and better quality options out there once you get away from chain craft stores. Working with this cloth was proof of that. It's stiffer than the Lineco stuff, which made it a little harder to glue down but not enough to cause problems, and it took HTV better than any other surface I've used it on. Here, check out the spines:
Images of the spines. In case the photos are a little blurry, that's Demolishing Proofs We Never Believed In on the left and The World and its Beautiful Particle Logic on the right. The titles gave me some worries. I didn't want to obscure more of the florals by putting them on the front, but was worried they wouldn't fit on the spines since they're so long. I got them on, but it took a lot of careful measurements. Still, though, I couldn't be more pleased by them, and I barely had any of my usual trouble getting the HTV to stick.
Handmade end bands on both sides, in colors matched to the cover paper. I was a little worried about making my own for this project since the text blocks are only about 100 pages each. I was worried they'd be too short. But they're not, and I got a really nice front bead on them. I wanted to do three colors but that proved too challenging for my current skill level. Maybe next time. The second image is the endpaper. Specifically it's the back endpaper, so you can see how the second spine fits into the case. When you read a dos-a-dos, you read the first part, then flip it over like you're going to read the back blurb and there's the second part ready to go. I only explain this because, having never made one, I thought you flipped it over top-to-bottom until I did the case fitting for this one. The top-to-bottom one it called a tete-beche and I think does not have the shared cover board in the center; the pages are connected upside-down. (This is all from my limited research; pro bookbinders please correct me if I'm wrong.)
Couple of interior images. All the graphics came from rawpixel and they are the same in both halves. I kept the typeset really simple on this one, without any extra graphics. Partly that was to keep the page count down (images can take up extra space) and partly it's a reflection of the text. It's a happily ever after story, mostly. Their lives are so much easier here than in canon, and the focus is on communicating without barriers or frills and on building their relationship without other things getting in the way. So it's got a fancy title page, because it matches the cover, but the rest is straightforward with just some simple swirls around the chapter numbers.
I couldn't be more pleased with how this turned out. I was worried it would be very complicated since it's a new-to-me build, but I was exaggerating the difficulty and that made for an easy bind. I hope the author likes it too.
Some of these are rougher than I'd like - I used kid's posterboard for these, since my cardstock wasn't big enough for the measurements, and it was much more difficult to fold.
It’s done!!!!!! Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth and Age of Innocence bound into a dos-á-dos book!
I’ve been planning this for months and been putting it off until this week because there were so many new techniques I wanted to learn to put into it (kettle stitching, making and using book cloth and the whole general concept of a dos-á-dos book)
It’s nowhere near perfect, but I’m proud of it.
Oh, I used @omfgreylo’s video on dos-á-dos binding to guide me.
dos-à-dos binding: two books bound back-to-back as one volume
Watch the process on YouTube
Juniper and Bergamot by SaintHeretical
It's hard out there for a female Alpha, especially one with Rey's past, but she's worked hard to find her place. Now at 22, she's the owner of the trendiest bar in Vancouver, The Antilles, which is staffed with her best friends and (unfortunately) full of pretentious hipster customers.
When a mysterious bottle of gin shows up at the bar, Rey sets out to find the person responsible for distilling it, and discover exactly how and why they chose to make it. Because the gin isn't just unusual; it also smells exactly like her.
37,145 words / 117 pages
Fonts: Sabon Next LT, Bodoni MT, Amalfi Coast
I’ll Come For You in Silence by AJLynne
A decade-long war seemingly comes to an end just as pilot Rey Johnson is called up for duty. She's glad for peace, even if it means she can't prove herself to the elite black ops helicopter unit she's assigned to. But when the treaty signing goes horribly wrong, Rey can only watch when the unit's Pilot-in-Command, Ben Solo, is sent back into action. As hostilities ramp up, the only chance for victory may lie with Rey and a deadly technology that must be kept secret at all costs, even from those who should be allies.
29,923 words / 101 pages
Fonts: Sabon Next LT, Neuton Light, HighVoltage Rough
Prose, Poetry, and Puzzles: Multiple Ways to Look at the Same Text!
Prose, Poetry, and Puzzles: Multiple Ways to Look at the Same Text!
Puzzle fans are used to searching for multiple avenues of entry when it comes to solving.
Crosswords have the across and down clues. Some people go straight for the pop culture clues, while others seek out fill-in-the-blank clues. Diagramless crosswords add an additional challenge by removing the black squares and set numbers that guide you.
Fill-Ins and Word Seeks have all sorts of entries you…
