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.
@renegadeguild runs an event every year called Renegade Loves Fic(Writers) to appreciate our fan writers by gifting them with binds of their work, and I took this day as an opportunity to finish a long-since promised author's copy of Hold the Line by @dontbefanci . This fantastic Glee fic where they are in marching band instead of show choir is free to read on Ao3.
Here's the book with its twin that lives on my bookshelf. I'm still so in love with the way this cover design turned out. Not bad for my first attempt with Affinity Designer! I love making author copies, thank you Fanci for letting me send you this one!
Every year, @renegadeguild celebrates Fanfiction Writers' Appreciation Day by encouraging members to select a favorite author and offering to bind and send them one of their stories. This year, I wanted to send my appreciation to @redoftheturks (AKA go_ask_ash on AO3)! Not only are they a phenomenal writer, they have created hundreds of hours of podfic/audiobooks of fanfictions and danmei series, including Mo Dao Zu Shi (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation), Tian Guan Ci Fu (Heaven Official's Blessing), Quan Qiu (Thousand Autumns), and their current project , Canji Baojun De Zhangxin Yu Chong (The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish).
As most of their work is done for books that already exist in physical form, I wanted to bring their own stories to life. They created an amazing series of one-shot TGCF fics (Hualian Honeymoon Housetour & Simple Studies in the Divination of Desire) set post-cannon as a newly married Xie Lian and Hua Cheng learn to explore the vast possibilities a physical relationship can have.
In the second series, a set of little black books comes into play. I knew I wanted to base this project off this reference, but I wanted to make it more complex than a simple black cover. The collage of satin, leather, and lace was a lot of fun to work with and a delightful challenge! It was wonderful getting to collaborate with Ash on this project, going back and forth on the progress as I figured out font selections and design features.
Ash's voice has joined me for many creation sessions as I work on book binds, quilts, and many other crafts. Making it possible for them to hold their own stories is the least I can do to say thank you for all they have contributed to the danmei world!
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!
