The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar
Typeset by c_art for the Tiny Books Bang 2025 - I saved a copy knowing I’d definitely want to bind this. A7, quarterbound hardback, self-ended with sewn headbands. Printed on 90gsm Munken Pure Smooth Ivory and bound in Pepin Press Art Nouveau design paper and dark blue bookcloth.
I made a bunch of mistakes with this, and the whole thing took me about 3 times as long to put together than usual - I’m very out of practice! Now that I have a printer again and can make books more regularly again I should hopefully get right back into the groove. :)
BNHA fic about a class exercise that turns into something big.
This is one of my favorite covers to date - the fantastic @nanabbi gave me permission to use their art, which I printed directly on fabric. Unfortunately my printer lost a lot of detail (there are more falling stars in the original and the lighter gray splotch had to do with the filled cloth I was printing on) and only does black so I had to paint the colors myself. I hope I managed to keep the original's drama.
It's constructed as a 3-part bradel case so I could use normal bookcloth (graphite color) for the spine and back. The overall dimensions are 7"h x 4.25"w x 1"thk, a legal quarto.
The spine title is two layers of heat transfer vinyl - I'm getting a bit better about aligning them, at least on 3-part bradel spines.
The interior isn't anything out of the ordinary - like most of my books it's a fairly plain typeset. The endpages are solid blue.
The endbands are sewn with alternating red and white. I'm a little out of practice but they came out all right. My finishing press looks like it's been through the war in this picture, but it does its job.
In process picture - reference vs printed on cloth. I had to extend the black in a couple of directions to give me room to put the title without overlapping the figure and so it wouldn't look weird where it was folded around the edge of the cover board.
Thanks again to the author and the artist! I'm so excited to have this book in my hands. (And for once, one of my best works is actually for my own library!)
So I've been a busy little bee lately! Now that all these books have reached their recipients I'll start posting them, and I want to start with one of my favorites---@wrenaspun's lovely fic, The Full Length of the Soul. I wanted to do something simple for this bind (opinions may vary on whether or not I hit that target) but this came together for me really quickly, and I'm really happy with it.
More pics and details under the cut.
So the idea was for this to be a half binding, where half of the front was bookcloth and half was marbled paper. As you can see the font of the title took up quite a bit more than that, and it became more like a three quarters binding. Will I eventually regret not putting some bookcloth on the outer edge? Maybe. It's pretty sturdy paper so I hope it'll be okay.
I used some marbled cream and gold paper for the endpapers. These are the marbled jute paper from Mulberry Papers and I have two 8x11s of almost every color in my stash. Very handy for situations like this, I was able to find something perfect without needing to order anything (unlike my other bindings...)
Here's a pic of the back.
Ugh I just love it, it's way simpler than the other books I've done lately but it really gives the marbled paper a chance to shine. That paper is Crepaldi, of course, and the bookcloth is duo (I am going to LOSE IT when I run out of my stash of duo, it's beautiful and I love it so much, I don't know what I'm going to do). All the gold, including the bands on the front and back, are HTV. I did protect the marbled paper with parchment while I was ironing it on but it did surprisingly well and the heat didn't damage the paper at all.
All in all this was a very easy bind! The guillotine didn't give me any trouble and the casing in was really easy. Even the HTV went done really nicely. I forgot to take a picture of the spine before I sent it away but it's just the title and it even went on straight and everything.
So, I've been in quite a massive (book and new fic) reading slump lately and ALSO a creative slump. I have a few fics I'd really like to bind but I find my 1st step always has to be designing the cover and I'm struggling a lot with coming up with ideas.
After coming up with a grand total of 0 ideas for all the projects in my head, I found an early [shitty] draft for a HIUH digital cover, and decided to brainstorm potential cover ideas. Funnily enough, I ended up not including the one thing that prompted me to start this (the pink sweater Damen gifts Nicaise at the beginning of the fic).
Mostly inspired by the way @thickenmyblood gets Damen to slowly deconstruct his toxic masculinity and lets him see how much of that played a role in the problems of their relationship. There's mostly symbolism for that.
I flirted with the idea of including Laurent's own brand of toxicity but I wasn't getting much inspo, so I decided to leave it there, post this and hope this will somehow magically help me get something concrete...
If you have any thoughts/ideas/suggestions PLEASE share and I'll be eternally grateful.
Sage by Lady Rhian. This fic was written almost immediately after Deathly Hallows. I read it at the time and wanted to have a copy in my library. 16 years later I bind it :D
I added a monogram on the spine with Hermione and Snape's initials. I'll start doing that with all the ships from the fics I bind. Placed the author's name on the cover, unfortunately, it lacked contrast.
Cover: Homemade book cloth made with cotton cloth; PVA-coated paper. HTV for titles.
Body: Cream bond paper of 90 grams. Sage leaves font for titles and Drop Caps. Garamond family for the body. 10 signatures with French stitching.
