#ficbinding

[cuteknightbindery]

This is a cute but super sad and melancholy fanfic called could roses bloom by BumblingBeesandWillowTrees (the wrong author name on the cover has been fixed). I love the Hanahaki trope a lot and this is such a unique take on it that really leans into the dead boys aspect. I actually shed a couple of tears reading this, like for real. The typeset and cover process wasn’t huge and I think I’m getting my grove with the process. I made the cover during my 30 covers in 30 days thing in November/ December last year (2025). I spent 44 minutes making the cover which was heavily inspired by a insta ficbind that was in turn inspired by a seed packet. I decided pretty early on in the design process that I wanted this to be a design that continues on in other Hanahaki covers regardless of the author or fandom. The additional pages such as the chapter page and title pages took about 15 minutes on canva. The typeset took 1 hour and 5 minutes to make. This is probably the quickest typeset I’ve ever made which is crazy. Together with the cover, pages and typeset - I spent about 2 hours and 5 minutes. I really like the style and think that larger font is better in quartos. I still do not have a printer so I can’t test out the printing to check out the fonts and I do not believe the font sizes truly look how they would on the sized pages in Affinity. I shall find out in future and possibly have to modify some typesets. Either way I am super happy with the typeset!

[cuteknightbindery]

This is a cover for dcxdp fanfic We're longing for daylight by AKelaNakamura.

I went into this knowing an idea, a musing, a nonconcrete feel of what I wanted. I had the vibes settled but no actual certainty other than grave and Jason. I looked around for different images of a grave and was surprised by how hard it was to find suitably eerie graveyard photos.  Most were close ups of specific graves and just wouldn't work how I wanted it to. I did find one of a grave in a mossy forest which I messed around with the colours of to get a more eerie feel and added in a bunch of mist elements with various levels of fading. I knew I wanted a pic of Jason so I searched for different ‘guy knelt down’ and other similar things to find a photo or shadow image I could use. I found one that worked and removed the background placing him in front of the grave. I added in various small moss balls (colour changed to match the ground) around his legs to make him more part of it instead of just thrown on. I chose a very simple font for the title in the top righthand side with a handwriting font smaller underneath for the author name.

The image wraps round to about ⅗ of the back as well so for the spine I just copied over the title and author name and just changed the positioning and size. For the back I added a column in green and placed the summary on top in black and the qr code underneath. I don't really like the way the back looks and think I'd like to switch over the font to match and maybe add in some kind of texture, maybe vhs scratch, to the top as it doesn't feel like it fits as is. It was a quick but calming cover to make. I might also add in a few green wisps around the grave but not sure as I do like the look of the front. It's just the back I'm not fond of.

This took about 24 minutes to make in canva.

[cuteknightbindery]

This is a typeset for the megamind fanfic floragenesis by dalniente. This is such a unique fanfic for a unique fandom and the only one I have read from it. This is such an interesting way to explore the hanahaki disease in a not so potentially fatal way. A lot less sadness, amnesia and miscommunication. I really loved it and I am so glad to read such a cool take with logical characters. The cover is one I made during my 30 covers in 30 days thing last year and followed the same format as my other hanahaki cover. This is the plan. I want all the hanahaki fics I eventually do to follow the same style/format in both the cover and the typeset - just different colours and the flowers of the fic. This one was obviously blue. I made the other hanahaki fic typeset yesterday and plan to, as with the covers, follow this format with the typesets. I made two text separators - One for Roxanne (Megamind flower petals) and one for Megamind (Roxanne Dalia petals). I spent 1 hour and 18 minutes creating the cover on Canva, 17 minutes on the additional pages and finally 1 hour and 20 minutes on this typeset. In total, I spent about 2 hours and 45 minutes.

[leyartser]

I really like New River by @gncgang so I turned it into a book!

Additional pictures and yapping below the cut

I was following this fic back when it was being released a few years ago, and really enjoyed at the time. I moved on from Jojo over the following years, but when I compiled some shorter Jojo fics for a different book a few weeks ago, I fell in love with the series again. That's when I remembered this fic, which then became my next project.

For my previous books, I had been using self-adhesive vinyl for the cover decorations. However, there's always the risk of it peeling off, which I really didn't want to happen with this book, and I also wanted to try something new. So, I decided use heat-transfer vinyl.

That also allowed me to use a more intricate cover design, courtesy of BeeSplendid (I have made some of my own cover designs in the past, but they're rather simplistic and I don't enjoy making them all that much) To make 100% sure I wouldn't mess up I did two practice rounds of ironing on a design, which helped a lot with getting the actual cover right.

That said, of course I had to include the original cover artwork in some way, so here it is adorning the title page.

I was also trying something new with this fic in the sense that it is the thickest book I have made so far. I actually had to make the font 1pt smaller than my usual go-to font size to keep it a little manageable (it still reads fine dw)

I generally leave a fic untouched when I'm formatting it for printing. I compare the way it looks in my file carefully to how it looks on AO3 and try to fix any weirdness that comes from transferring the text from AO3 to my editor, and I move the notes to a section in the back.

The only arguably major change I made was adding custom dividers. As I did so, I paid close attention to how different types of dividers were used in the fic so that I could keep that aspect intact when I replaced them with custom ones.

The book turned out perfectly, except that I discovered as I was going through the finished book just now that I fucked up the placement of one sheet in one signature so now there's a few pages out of order around chapter 10 :( Mildly devastating but c'est la vie I guess

[cuteknightbindery]

These are the three typesets I made for the fantastic ROTG Fic series The White Wolf by @kayasurin.

ROTG - The White Wolf Volume 1: Birth of the white wolf & Of pooka and werewolves

 I really enjoyed making this typeset. It is the first volume in a set of 3 and this one contains the prequel and short stories for the overall main fantastic. I love the more feral nature of Jack and it is a super fun fic. This is also the first time I used a new fave font (look how cool!) which is super fun. It was a surprisingly quick typeset to make, fingers crossed I am starting to get more comfortable with the Affinity Publisher program. This typeset took about 1 hour and 25 minutes. It took about 5 minutes to get it all separated how I wanted. The additional pages took approximately 35 to 40 minutes to complete and finally the cover took about 3 hours to make in Canva (for all 3 covers) I am going to say each took an hour though realistically it would have been the longest for the first cover and then less for the other two. That would make this about 3 hours and 10 minutes total for the digital volume. Really like the vibes of the volumne and will continue it into the other two for cohesion. 

ROTG - The White Wolf Volume 2: The Death of Easter  

 This is the second volume in The White Wolf fanfic trilogy. This is also the second typeset done for the trilogy. The covers for the whole trilogy took 3 hours to make and while I am just dividing into 3 (1 hour each), I am very aware that the first cover would have taken much much longer and then I would have copied over certain formats. The typeset for this volume took 1 hour and 30 minutes. I have continued on the design elements like font choices from the previous one and will continue it into the final volume. The additional pages took 30 minutes for all 3 volumes so again while I am separating it into 10 minutes each even though the first one always takes the longest. So in total, 1h 30m + 1 h + 10m - 2 hours and 40 minutes to design in its totality. 

ROTG - The White Wolf Volume 3: Hungry Like The Wolf  

This is the last in The White Wolf Trilogy by Kayasurin. While it is not complete, the author included notes on how they planned to continue it if possible. As this typeset follows the following two fanfic typesets from the series, it is a quicker typeset to create. The fanfic typeset took approx 1 hour and 10 minutes and as mentioned in the 2 previous volumes - I have split the time of the additional pages and the covers into 3 even though the 1st one would have taken the longest with the other two following a very similar if not equal style. The covers took 3 hours for the three (1h each when divided) and the additional pages took 30 minutes to complete ( 10 minutes divided). In total, this volume took 1 h 10min + 1 h + 10 m = 2 hours and 20 minutes. I am happy with the style choices for the series though I am a little nervous about the readability of the seaweed script once printed - we shall see after I have bought my printer (future birthday gift for myslef!).

[mothdogsart]

I created a bind of @carry-the-sky’s collected Good Omens fics for a fandom art exchange ♥️

(You can read the stories here! They’re so good! Do yourself a favor and read With Velvet Kisses immediately 😭)

The cover was highly inspired by this copy of Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star:

Technical details ➡️

Bookcloth: Lilac cotton bookcloth from Amazon

Textblock paper: Hammermill 20lb in cream

Endpaper: Renato Crepaldi from Talas

Fonts: Versailles (title), Sabon (body)

See more of my bookbinding work here: https://mothdogsart.tumblr.com/tagged/bookbinding

‼️ My binds are not for sale. Authors and artists can request gift copies. Keep fanfiction free and legal.‼️

[cuteknightbindery]

Amazing time regression standalone fic called Lessons Learned (Lessons unlearned) by @cywscross avaliable to read on a03. I really like the style I have gone with for this typeset. It is very dark academia with a focus on Percy. The cover took me 42 minutes to make in Canva, the additional pages ( 3 chapter pages, quote/summary pages, etc) took 20 minutes and finally the typeset itself took me about 1 hour and 20 minutes. In total 2 hours and 22 minutes to make the entire project. I really like how it has come out though the fanfic has separating empty lines between each text line which I would prefer it not to have but I am just not spending ages going through the fic to sort it out and have instead made as small as possible. I did have to make the chapter and chapter numbers on a separate canva page and download transparent to place over as the text wrap settings for the chapter pages were played with using invisible shapes. Really happy with the typeset and love the fic.

Keep fanfic free.

[cuteknightbindery]

This is a quarto typeset for the fic more precious than gold by Drag0nSt0rm avaliable to read on A03. This is another case of creating a new copy of the previous typeset even though I did really like my previous one that I had made back in 2024 when I first got into the hobby. I am redoing these typesets for a higher print quality and as I am keeping a lot of the different design choices the same as before. As I wasn’t also planning and make these choices and the fact that the fanfic is 12,949 words long, it didn’t take long to make for a typeset. I spent maybe 10 to 15 minutes on the cover ages back (pre-timing) and used a lot of those elements and the typeset images when recreating or making new images to include. I spent 5 minutes making the title pages but it did take 10 to 15 to go through the old typeset (via Office Libre as google docs doesn’t let you copy your images from the doc) to recreate the text separators.

The typeset itself only took a little over 1 hour and 20 minutes to make.

This would be even less if I didn’t go through the fanfic and the typeset side by side to italicise all the different parts of the fic that were in italics (doesn’t copy over to Affinity). This means that I spent about 1 hour and 45 minutes to create. This does not include the 1st typeset being made which would have taken quite a while due to lesser program and still learning the basics of typesetting. Such a cute fanfic from an amazing writer!