ignore the fact that they never interact in canon and that theyre 6 years apart and not in the same social circles and that they'd probably get on each other nerves a lot but do you guys ever think about how tenzo and genma are both very eligible bachelors. because I do. @summerhighlandfalls has cursed me with an affection for a rarepair that won't stop occupying my thoughts and then fueling the fire by writing the most adorable oneshot about them
My most recent project !! It's a two for one special, a small collaboration between myself and @summerhighlandfalls for some Genyam fics (you can read at the links if so inclined), which I turned into a three-part series 🥰
Progress pics and details under the cut!
I learned a lot during the making of these binds. I did my first cut-out cover which I absolutely love, though I didn't plan the scaling of the drawing well and it is too wide to fit nicely in the space. Next time I know to make any cover drawings more vertical. the colors were also very washed out on regular paper, but I think that's the fault of my somewhat shitty printer. Next time I will likely try printing cover art on glossy photo paper and see how it looks/adheres.
For the spine, I originally bought some vinyl leather but the felt backing was too thick and absorbed all the PVA, it basically wouldn't stick at all. So instead I did some thrift store shopping to find a few pillow cases in a matching color. This is the first time I've used bookcloth for both the spine and cover (previously doing a fabric/paper combo or all paper). I think my rotary cutter is too dull because the trim on the book clothed frayed quite badly leaving me with a horrible edge once I applied it. I also overshot the glue and it seeped out, staining the spine fabric.
To hide fix it, I applied a stripe of black ribbon to cover where the fabrics meet. And then changed the blue ribbon bookmark to match the black which looks way better at the end.
And that's just the issues with the case. 😅 I also bought my very first guillotine! I bought a kind of cheap one off vevor (I know, don't tell me) and despite about 30 test cuts I had some technical difficulties cutting one of the text blocks. One ended up far shorter than the other, and terribly uneven. However, the one that came out nicely is really nice, and once I was done the bindings I spent a few hours finageling with the cutting blade and the positioning of the pad to get the cuts nice. My next bind should hopefully be way more square.
And as for the typography, I included some details I hadn't before, like QR's to link directly to the fics on Ao3 and all of the tags and word count (which I realized post-print that I accidentally chopped off for the final fic near the end of the page 🥲). I also experimented (painfully and at length) with full page dividers between the parts, with mixed results.
I don't have a borderless printer nor access to one, so what I did was to make the design for each section, print the left and right halves separately in the middle of an 11x17 piece of paper and then cut them down to the size of an 11x8.5 while matching up the designs, and then slotted that 11x8.5 into my stack of paper as it fed into the printer so that the signature formatting printed where i wanted around the manually cut sheets. whew! Do I like it? Yes. Will i do it again? Not likely. It wasn't printed on the same short grain paper as the rest of the the text block (I only have access to a big boy HP at work for 11x17's, dont tell my boss) so it loses some of it's nice fluid flip action because these pages mid signature have a different grain direction. But it looks cool, so I won't complain too hard.
I've yet to figure out how to put the title on the spine, so for now it's sadly blank. Theres lots of options that I haven't made a decision on and I dont want any (more) expensive and highly specific equipment or tools. So that is a learning opportunity for my next project. I also experimented with sewn headbands but I found it too difficult and not fun, and these books are so thin that my bad attempts stood out starkly, so I removed them are the end (and then forgot to put any headbands at all 🤨)
But all in all I'm very happy with them!! So thank you to Summer for the inspiration that started the obsession, and onto my next bind! 😊
(orochimaruifed Tenzo au) all you need to know for this drawing is that in this au genma is interim captain of team kakashi instead of tenzo and maybe they kiss a little. dont ask any more questions we haven't ironed everything out
