#my fanbinding

[epitomereally]

Bound: Happy Death Race by powerfulowl (FFWAD 2025)

Read Happy Death Race by @powerful-owl on AO3

(Carlos Sainz/Oscar Piastri, Formula 1 RPF)

Carlos gazes up at the fake blue sky. Dopey grin, contrapposto pose, head as empty as the cottony clouds above. “Look, look. Look, Piastri. It is always daylight.” Oscar imagines pushing him into the piss water canal. "Yeah, cool. Stop dying!" (Oscar is in a time loop and Carlos won't stop dying.)

helloooooooo to one of my favorite fics on 2024-2025 written by one of my favorite authors, the incredible the wonderful the magnificent the darling @powerful-owl !!! i would follow her over the edge of a cliff after her incredible maxiel work, and apparently that cliff is carcar fic.

so, when the Renegade Loves Fic (Writers) fest came around for Fanfic Writer Appreciation Day, i knew immediately i had to bind Em A Fic.

this fic is unmatched freak4freak energy, and is the sole reason i now ship carcar. the way em writes each driver's individual voice is UNPARALLELED: oscar is such a hilarious wry dry insecure narrator, and carlos is a bombastic fucked-up also hilarious foil for him. em's descriptions, the dark humor, the way it all ties together, it's just the WHOLE FUCKING PACKAGE, and i am so so so honored to have gotten to bind Em a copy of this <3

i normally talk about design inspiration here, but honestly this fic just fell into my lap with em's insane visuals and motifs throughout, especially my lil babe the ominous and evil Las Vegas Sphere. i was also extremely inspired by @phoenixortheflame's incredible bind of Far from the Tree with her glitchy sci-fi vibe.

and now, for some more money shots:

binding info:

body font: Minion Pro

accent fonts: SF Pro (official Instagram font), Slipstream D

endpaper: claire guillot

bookcloth: duo sunshine

HAPPY FANFIC WRITERS APPRECIATION DAY, EM! we appreciate you and all your works so fucking much <3 & thank you to all my babes (non-gendered) in the drarry binders server who supported me through the seven levels of despair i experienced making this bind, promising me it would turn out in the end. you were right, you always are MWAH

[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.

[three--rings]

One of the largest projects I've been working on is this typeset and book version of 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors, one of my very favorite video games. (Which later became the first game in the Zero Escape franchise.)

The game is a visual novel and escape room game combo with multiple routes and endings leading to a true ending. So this version is structured like a Choose-your-own-Adventure book where you flip to different pages depending on your choices.

I also made it possible to skip all the less linear escape/puzzle sequences because they don't read very cohesively. But they do contain a lot of funny or revealing lines so I didn't want to eliminate them entirely.

I should also mention one of the reasons for doing this is that I wanted to preserve the original text of the game from the Nintendo DS version from 2010. When it was remastered/ported to PC and Switch a lot of the dialogue was rewritten very much for the worse. As well as making the novel sections optional, which destroys a lot of the point and atmosphere of the game.

The book is a full leather casebind, with stenciled titles. The leather was honestly a little too thick and required a lot of paring, which is terrifying because any slip could ruin it. And the final satin finish I put on made a lot of the leather flaws look worse and more obvious, which is annoying. It was my first time doing faux raised bands on the spine, and they came out nice.

My printer decided to fuck with me while printing this one and the color alignment is off. This is my second attempt at printing it and it's better than the first but still not great. But I wasn't gonna waste so much paper again.

And no, I'm not planning on doing the sequels. I can't imagine trying to deal with VLR's 28 endings when doing 6 was this challenging and annoying. And the sequels are perfectly represented by their existing playable versions, unlike 999.

[sunshine304]

MTH Fanbinding: Winter of the White Wolf Vol. 7 by K. LeCrone

It took me a while, but I've finally manged to finish my @marveltrumpshate offering (auction 1051) from last year. @klecrone won my fanbinding auction and asked me to bind what is to become the 7th volume of her epic fic "Winter of the White Wolf".

I had basically free reign on the design and since this particular part of the story focusses on Bucky's fracturing mind, I decided to run with a darker Winter Soldier theme.

The colours were a no-brainer - grey, black, blue, and red as an accent colour seemed like the way to go. I decided early on that I wanted the red star on the cover, and I really liked the idea of having the paper be somewhat transparent, with a picture of the Winter Soldier underneath.

It's easier to see in real life - I struggled with the transparent paper, and of course the glue made it a bit wavy, but overall I think the effect worked well enough.

For the back, I'd at first thought about the star as well, or having the colours run diagonally from the front to the back. I didn't like both options in the end, and finally decided on this kind of "arrow" design. I also included the title in the Wakandan script, as K. had wanted some Wakandan decorative elements and my initial ideas didn't seem fitting with this design anymore.

BTW, I totally screwed up that script at one point - I put it on upside down and went into a bit of a crisis over it. Luckily, I was able to very carefully scrape the foil off again and redo it. Phew!

For the spine, I reversed the colour for the titling as a contrast to the front, though the black foil came out weaker than I had anticipated. Well, it is readable, and it refused to come out any better.

For the endpapers, I chose a lovely, very dark blue marbled paper that seemd to fit the state of Bucky's mind well.

I included lots of art from the fic, by the author and by other artists who had gifted the author their works. I also added the extensive notes for each chapter in an Appendix, as I felt that they contained some important information on the story.

Thank you again, KLeCrone, for your generous donation and your great collaboration! <3 This was a fun bind for me and I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

Materials used:

Printed on Clairefontaine DCP 100g

Case and endpapers:

booklinen Colibri graphite

booklinen Colibri cranberry

booklinen Colibri dolphin

booklinen Colibri lagoon

Franch marbled paper

Hot Foil (Memory Keepers & Glimmer)

[deepestbluesky]

@gempothospress was kind enough to give me their very elegant and delightful (the little alligator scene breaks!!) typeset for Linger in the Sun by etymologyplayground / @megafaunatic and now i have bound a copy for my very own!! i thought about doing something more. um. idk. alligator-y or river-y for the cover but then i had those little stripes of the endpage paper left over and i thought it'd look nice this way. i forgot to get a picture but i sewed it with red thread so every so often there's a fun Wei Wuxian-esque pop of red in the middle of the pages!

[woodlandwarbler]

My 2024 Renegade Bindery Bound Fic Exchange book, Howl's Twisted Castle by Winrywieldswrenches!

Details under the cut.

Very pleased with the title/drop cap font, Protest by 177 Studio.

Bookcloth is a mysterious red from a group auction buy. It has a funny texture but worked nicely.

Paper on the cover was hand marbled by me!

First time doing edge sprinkling, and first time decorating edges without sanding. I'm very pleased with how it came out! I did have to spend several minutes scrubbing my floor for wild paint sprinkles.

Hand sewn endbands with DMC embroidery floss.

Endpapers (not pictured) are Craft Consortium Ink Drops.

Used Bitter Melon Bindery's casing-in method from this video and it went swimmingly with cardstock endpapers.

Just noticed I typoed the author's name on the title page 🫠

The author is not on Tumblr but was record fast in okaying her fic to bind, and very lovely when I sent photos!

[nocturnus33]

Kill your darlings by MesserMoon, a fantastic fic you could read at AO3 for free.

I love this story, and am happy to have it in my collection. That said, I can tell you that this binding was very eventful.

I think I will change my name to Not Perfct bindery. The two volumes of this book took me a long time, because I was buried in workload. It seems that every day I picked up this binding project, I made some mistake. The worst one was sewing the signatures too tightly so it was impossible to round the spine. Another mistake I made while cutting the fabric, as can be seen, the covers were in different proportions. This is my 60th binding; and I must learn that in excess of confidence lies the danger.

@sophsicle

[hexapress]

The Chasing of Moons by @helenamayhathaway

The biggest dilemma in all of this is that Frank slept with his future husband. Now Frank’s just got to make sure that the future with him stays intact, but it’s not so easy when present day Gerard seems to hate his guts.


My biggest dilemma is that I do not have the words to express how wonderful the journey Helena’s story took me on is. I am pretty sure I experienced every emotion known to man throughout these 36 chapters. Helena’s narration of Frank’s character and the obstacles he faces is just… so entertaining. His inner monologue, the way the trio interact (Pete, Brendon and Frank, and Mikey, Ray and Gerard, then both trios), and the sheer complexity of having already slept with your soulmate who by the way, you have not really met in your present had me aching for, laughing with and pining along with each character. This is not an obstacle you expect to be faced with, so I sympathize with Frank, but at the same time, I cannot help but roll my eyes at his extreme attempts to woo his soulmate. Surely, there had to be a simpler way to achieve that? Well, this had me thinking about what I would do if I were ever in such a position. Luckily, I am a very diplomatic person. I am not one to make enemies on purpose. But I am very forgetful. Not on purpose, never on purpose. So it is not entirely impossible that I could find myself in such a position, which can turn out to be a daunting experience. Frank’s extreme attempts are totally justified, it turns out. Luckily, Helena makes it clear that good things happen to those who wait… and persistently stalk and annoy their soulmate until they get them to (admit to having) fall(en) in love with them (courtesy of their from-the-future!soulmate’s help), because their present!soulmate is one stubborn bastard. 

Take notes everyone. In fact, go read this fic. I don’t think it was written as a guide for dealing with such dilemmas, but it’s worth covering just in case. You never know!


One of my favorite thing about the construction of this book was the book cloth I used. It’s a purple-blue duotone that changes color depending on the light. Another thing that I’m discovering about the beauty of making books is that people see them. They exist in the tangible world… 


Because we are still quarantining in this part of the world, only the members of my household have seen and touched these books. My sibling who has no interest in fandom or bandom saw this particular book, said it looked nice then went and looked up the story! I wonder, when I start having people over again, if they will also take an interest in these fics… 
So this was my first time rounding a book and leaving the edges untrimmed. They’re called deckled edges. I am not sure I am a fan, which is why you do not see a proper picture of them in this post as I am still making up my mind about them. they look pretty, but they are also somewhat fragile, because my folding is not 100% neat, some are uneven and thus with use, they probably will fray. I want my books to last, so I may revisit this in the future. 
This time, I used a paper strip to make the spine! It’s a bit harder to round thicker paper around a rounded spine… things to remember for next time!