#fic binding

[puppiesareperfect]

people on TikTok don’t realize fic binding didn’t begin with idiots selling mass printed fanfiction on TikTok-Shop. They think it started as a negative thing ON TIKTOK😭it started on tumblr years ago as a way to appreciate authors!! It was never about selling fics, we’re AGAINST THAT HERE and always have been. I am so tired of the way TikTok rewrites fandom culture.

[haxkattpress]

One Elephant at a Time by fundlebundle

"The flame cast strange shadows on his face and made the Dark Mark dance on his pale skin. It had been ten years since he’d last seen Draco Malfoy."

It's hard to believe that I started working on the typeset for this bind in October of last year. Nearly eleven months later, I have finally managed to bring my vision to life.

This bind has a foiled cover and spine, hand sewn silk endbands, and edges that have been painted and gauffered. It also includes my first attempt at a hollow.

You can find more pictures and information about my process under the cut.

***this fic is an unfinished WIP on Ao3***

For the cover and spine, I recreated Albert Angus Turbayne's design for the Macmillan Peacock Series (1896).

Macmillan reused this cover for multiple titles over the course of several years. From what I can tell, it was initially created for the works of Thomas Love Peacock. If you look at the left corner by the edge of the peacock's tail feather, you can see Turbayne's unique signature.

Choosing this cover locked me into an 1890s Art Nouveau theme for the typeset, and I spent a considerable amount of time tracking down potential chapter headers that harmonized visually.

Peacocks are a distinctive motif in this fic, and I tried to choose images that matched the individual tones of each act. I represented Harry's presence with warm browns, yellows, and oranges, and Edwin Selwyn's with imposing blues and blacks.

A full list of the artists used in my typeset can be found at the bottom of this post.

Predictably, everything that could go wrong with this bind did go wrong. I botched the rounding and backing on my first textblock, and had to reprint it. It also took me a long time to find endpapers that could play nicely with the yellows, blues, and browns. Luckily, Jemma Lewis had exactly what I needed!

I had never sanded or painted the edges of a book before, so I spent several weeks practicing on scrap textblocks while I waited for my brass tool to arrive. None of this would have been possible without the incredible tutorials made by @copticcowgirl and @duran-binding. Their guidance (along with @pleasantboatpress!) helped me figure out a method that worked for me. Duran Binding even sent me some pages about gauffering from a book she had!

Unfortunately, I lost my goddamn mind when I started trying to figure out the gauffering.

There aren't any comprehensive gauffering tutorials online, and the information about it is scant. I had to piece together my method from stray book pages, stalked instagram comments, and weeks upon weeks of trial and error. Heating the tool correctly was far more difficult than I anticipated, and I didn't have a proper finishing stove, so I just stuck it in the flame of my gas stove (thanks to @pleasantboatpress for the heating advice!). Even more difficult was figuring out the correct amount of pressure to put down without burning my foil or edges. Pictured above is the cardstock grid I made to ensure my lines were even.

I also couldn't fit my textblock in my guillotine, so it took me roughly 5 hours of sanding per edge to get the mirror finish I needed. I didn't want to give myself carpal tunnel, so I limited myself to 1-2 hours of sanding per day. Each edge took me a full week to complete. In total, my edge decoration journey took me about three months.

So please, LOOK AT THEM! LOOK! MY BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS!

DOES MY AGONY PLEASE YOU?

I was also too chickenshit to try gauffering on my good textblock without testing, so I also finished two edges on my reject. I also tested my endbands on it. I will probably finish it when I'm feeling less raw.

Unfortunately, gauffering was only the beginning of my suffering. The file for the cover was a challenge to create and adapt. I knew that it was a bit of a pipe dream, and I knew that it would be hard on my machine. I usually do a series of cardstock tests while refining my files before I commit to bookcloth. It proved to be too much for my Cameo 4, and it started gouging my foil and paper after completing a few runs of the cover.

After two weeks of troubleshooting and emailing support, I accepted that my Cameo 4 was dead. Queue a month of depression, and some of the greatest frustration I've ever experienced with a project. I eventually sucked it up and bought a Cameo 5, and had to do extensive testing to figure out the best settings for their native heat pen system.

These are the vast majority of my cover tests (most of them are double sided). Foiling the cover took 12.5 nail biting hours, but my Cameo 5 finally pulled through! Hooray! I love you Cameo 5! Please don't die on me! There was one odd area that refused to foil, so I cracked open my old WRMK pen and filled it in by hand. Pro tip: separate every design element in as many layers as possible so you can double up on foil and redo problem areas easily.

After this, everything began to move along quite quickly.

@copticcowgirl convinced me to put a hollow on my book, and sent me some absolutely incredible notes and videos to help me along! She was also incredibly gracious when I barged into her DMs wailing about millimeter and half millimeter increments, and gently guided me towards the finish line. So much of this bind would not have been possible without her!

Mummifying the hollow was my favorite part, and I really do believe that it helps my book open beautifully. After that, it was a small matter of casing in, and I was free from my seemingly eternal torment!

I would also like to extend my thanks to @tsurashi-bindery, who has been by my side every step of the way. She is the world's best tie breaker, and she patted me on the back every time I told her that I was really, truly, totally going to quit binding for real this time. Her aesthetic sense is fantastic, and she spent hours helping me pick, edit, and arrange my photos. Thank you for being my cheerleader. <3

I also genuinely appreciate everyone that reached out to me on Insta and Discord while I was posting WIPs- your encouragement truly kept me going!

I will likely be posting a gauffering video at some point when I have the time. I don't currently have any plans to share the typeset unless the fic is completed, but you're welcome to DM me.

If you've read this far you're a superstar! This fic is incredibly close to my heart, and I'm relieved that I was able to properly express how I feel about it through this bind. Here's hoping my next project is a bit shorter!

Art credits:

Cover: Macmillan Peacock Series, Albert Angus Turbayne (1896)

Title: Untitled book plate, Alfred Petrasch (1857-1910)

Act I title: Macmillan’s Illustrated Standard Novels, Albert Turbayne (1896)

Act I chapter: Cigales et lis, paons et cytise, bordures, M. P. Verneuil (1897)

Act II title: Charles Scribner’s Sons the Modern Poster, Will H. Bradley (1895)

Act II chapter: Kunst en Samenleving, G.W. Dijsselhof (1893)

Act III title: Bradley, His Book, Will H. Bradley (1896)

Act III chapter: Poissons et algues, coq, écoinçon; paons et vigne; lièvres, chiens et ronces, bordure, M. P. Verneuil (1897)

Dinkus: Fonderie Typographique Française: Caractères et vignettes bois (1922)

Act ender: Combinaisons ornementales, M. P. Verneuil (1901)

[gia-d]

Listen, no one said the art had to be a drawing for the @linkshipping-big-bang ...

I had the absolute pleasure of being paired with @cloudyskies48 and their absolutely bittersweet vidow retelling of the Four Swords manga, The Shadow and the Light. I really hope I managed to capture the longing and tragedy of your fic in the bind.

Go read it, it's absolutely beautiful.

[sgtmickeyslaughter]

A love letter for my favorite fanfic: Boy in the Box

by Mellow_Yellow aka @ohjafeeljadefinitelyfeel! This cover was also one of my first embroidery projects that I made with this fic bind in mind if I got the green light from the author—it's inspired (loosely) by one of the final scenes in the fic and captures a lot of the isolation and melancholy I always feel in this story. So unbelievably happy to have this on my bookshelf forever ❤︎

[syrupfog]

Utilities Included written by @strawhattery illustrated by @newttxt

Mold in the shower, burns on the carpet, and nothing but hot sauce and pickles in the kitchen. Sanji doesn't know it yet, but the apartment he's moving into—and the alpha he's sharing it with—will change his life.

I've spent... about six month on this bind and I am beyond proud. I've been obsessed with this very specific sewn board binding style pioneered by Gary Frost; a hardcover book with a softcover spine. And after a year or so of begging, my coworker agreed to teach me.

Every time we got together she started her spiel with "Okay so he did this part in the weirdest way possible--"

Anyway. I'm so proud. I'm going to do it again and again and again (but I will remember my thimbles this time, because this book has a double endband which I sewed nearly a month ago and I'm still missing some feeling in my fingers).

I'm so happy that Bree and Quip allowed me to bind this fic for this experiment. I hope they know that as it sat on my work desk for the last six months, the number of comments I got about "you're binding your rental agreement??" was absurdly high. May they never know the truth. I'm not sure leaving printed fic lying around at work is the best decision.

[thatdisasterauthor]

It's All Canadian Vodka's Fault | Fic Binding

(Spoilers for the fic if you zoom in on the interior shots!)

I am a sucker for presumed dead fics, but I am also soooooo picky about them. When I read It's All Canadian Vodka's Fault by @fripiewrites I fell in love immediately. It's the perfect balance of angst, a realistic scenario, and comfort at the end. And, bonus, it has a bunch of multi-media elements! As soon as I finished I knew I wanted to bind the fic. It's a short enough fic that I wasn't sure I could make a hardcover work, but I did! The only thing I had to do different was use string for a bookmark instead of a ribbon.

For the interior, I spent a lot of time creating different looks for all those multi-media elements, and I learned a lot of stuff about InDesign I'd never done before, so that was super neat. Some parts were really tricky, like the Tweets, to keep them formatted right and not breaking weird between pages. But I got it done! (I about murdered my printer when printing it out, though. It kept fucking up. Printers are the devil.)

I also found a neat font that had a sort of jersey-ish feel to it for that title page. For the scene dividers I used some bottle symbols from a symbol font. For the page numbers, I used some sort of blob shaped symbols around the numbers, with different ones on the left vs. right pages.

For the endpapers, I chose this matte black that has a raised chevron pattern because it made me think of tire treads a bit, and then I used my Cricut to cut out vodka bottles with the Canadian maple leaf. Then I glued this nice blue with a subtle icy pattern to the back to create a solid endpaper. The front and back papers each have different vodka spills around them to add a little extra visual interest.

Then for the covers I picked a shiny black that reminded me of a high end vehicle interior, and a slightly burnt orange vinyl with a nice metallic shine to it. On the front cover, I wanted to go with a somewhat classic style of a border that had the title and some simple elements within, and I thought it would be fun to make that border a hockey rink, and I'm really happy with how it came out! It's not too in your face, but you CAN tell what it is.

Figuring out how to do the car was the biggest challenge, how to turn it into a Cricut friendly design, what size to make it, etc. I like how it came out, but I think I might go add a heart to the license plate at some point. It's not quite big enough to put any letters/numbers there, but I think a little heart would work great and fill that space in nicely.

On the back cover I wanted to keep it simple (to save myself weeding time... >.>) so I pulled out one of the main news headlines from the story, and some of Shane's texts. With the texts, I put them on the left side since they're ones Ilya is reading, and I put a blank space in between the second and third to leave that space where Ilya's response would've gone but didn't.

So yes! Very, very good fic that I can't recommend enough. I had so much fun binding it.

[dontcallmebree]

I clawed my way into the light, but the light is just as scary by romcommie, binding by DCB Bindery

Summary: You're lying. You're leaving the important parts out again. You're ignoring what's happening in the house, you're ignoring the red string that's supposed to be leading the way, time-adherent. Of course. That's because all strings can be cut, all strings can wind up dead ends, all things can be taken away, including time. The string's not red because of the poetry of it all, bub. It's red because someone's bled all over it.

Ever since I found the beloved name, exiled, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it or the series it belongs to. Thank you to @bromcommie for letting me bind this incredible work for this year’s Binderary!

Specs: Accordion binding with hardcovers and half A5 sheets as tabs, A6, 31 pages.

On the process: This was one hell of a gauntlet, from typesetting free verse poetry to my first foray into accordion binding. I ended up quite pleased with the typeset, but it was impossible to take proper pictures of all the details, so please forgive my rambling description.

This singular accordion binding contains both parts of the series, which starts at either end of the book. Each side reads like a regular book, with coordinating hard covers, title pages, etc. The two parts are printed on opposite sides of the same sheets. So depending on which cover you read from, you’re getting a different book in the series. A few elements in the title, series, and other supplemental pages are inspired by the use of morse code in the poems.

Mirroring the narrative, all elements in the common denominator of all truth start off in red. The text then gradually turns black as we arrive at the end. This ‘back cover’ is where the beloved name, exiled starts on the other side. Similarly, the gradient is present where all elements start in black and goes to red, mirroring where the narrative starts and ends.

Given the two characters featured in these two parts and their journeys, the significance of these opposite colors representing their endings was so fun for me to execute.

The gradient is also most prominent and easiest to follow along the line on the bottom where the page numbers are, an exciting element to bring to the accordion binding. Except it was impossible to take pictures of the effect because the accordion expands into a very long book. But I promise the line on the bottom goes from red to black and vice versa for each respective work in the series.

The binding itself was really tricky, not least because the paper I used was very thin. Glueing every single page was finicky, tedious, and took a lot of trial and error. I refuse to discuss the skew.

Overall, this was actually a fun challenge to typeset and an interesting new type of binding for me to try. I just wish it wasn’t so hard to take pictures highlighting all the cool details I was excited about executing.

More DCB Bindery Projects

[zerosconsort]

Zero's Fic Binding - Never Too Late for Love

Never Too Late For Love by @sineala

Fandom: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Ultimates

Ship: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark

Start Date: 04/25/25

End Date: 02/15/26

Pages: 231

A surprise bind. While Zapped was working through the art for SotM for me, I….kinda got carried away. I had been looking for a reason to bind this fic, so this was perfect reason to.

The soulmate idea is one that i loveloveLOVE. Red string of fate, find each other in every universe, this was always going to happen - I eat that shit up. So for this fic, I swept through and found every mention of a soulmate, bond, or soulbond - and highlighted them all red. (Sineala taught me a new word today - rubrication. I stole the idea from the Medieval Manuscripts research I did for a previous bind, but of CORSE there's an actual word for it. It just felt right to do...)

I pulled my overall inspiration from the Le Chat Noir - the 1896 poster, specifically, you know the one. Between the lace, the cat, and the color combo - everything felt like it fit really well with the theme of the story. I wish I could explain why it felt like it fit, exactly. Maybe because Ults tony has always felt like such a cat to me. Or maybe it’s the hue of the whole universe has this…old paper, big band, gramophone sound to it. Either way, i grabbed on to the idea and leaned in. 

Overall, this bind for MTH 2024 was the simplest. Probably because the original idea was so clear. Other than working through finding all the right words to highlight in the text block, the whole book was put together very quickly - then sat on my hard drive for half a year.

This fic is delightful. It’s got my favorite flavor of angst - the gay panic guilt is sooooo yummy. Please go read it (or, read it again!)