I do not take commissions. #My bookbinding for my work.
At the end of all the books I typeset (the process of formatting text into a book), I include this colophon adapted from Rengade's Manifesto, which summarizes my approach to fanbinding.
Woodland Warbler Press is a member of the Renegade Bookbinding Guild, a collective workshop community connected by shared values, shared goals, shared work, and shared stories. We value fanfiction and fanwork in all its forms, and our fannish culture’s infinite diversity in infinite combinations. We consider publishing to be a political act of resistance and self-determination that makes an unequivocal statement about the value we see in these endangered, underground works.
Come and join us! Join the Discord or follow Renegade Bookbinding, check out our community resources, and come make art with us.
Two Fanbindings of Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary (one in english, one in german) as a coupled twin-binding for me and my bestie who went to see the movie with me immediately when I expressed my wish for it! (Which is why the location mark is blacked out, thats the cinema we went to!)
While browing I saw these two papers and knew i needed to use them for endpapers. This also sparked my wish to bind this book at all. It took me around two months from conception to finished product.
The bookcloth is Wooqu's starry black bookcloth and it is positively SPARKLY in real life - pictures dont really do it justice. My first time using the Silhouette cutter too, and thus also my first time using HTV. A game changer, honestly. I really enjoy how it looks.
A small bind of all the Murderbot short stories to complete the series on my shelf. First time painting the edges of a book with acrylic paint and oh boy, did I have a bad time with that.
"death and taxes (and shane hollander)," fanbind for @fingersfallingupwards! an absolutely awe-inspiring fic of second chances and the human experience that has brought me so much joy. bound for me and the author, more photos and details on my AO3!
My printer is on the fritz and I was woe-is-me-ing for a while about not being able to bind fics, when I suddenly realized that I don't need a printer to do a fancy rebind! I already owned The Martian, and had been wanting to read Project Hail Mary, so I got that in paperback also and -- voila! -- a matching set of fancy rebinds! More details under the pics.
Both fabrics are Duo, but only one is the two-tone and I wish I could capture how it shifts from pure green to blue-green to pure purple and every combination in between. The second pic is my best attempt at catching a purple angle. Vinyl is Siser Easy Weed in gold, which is a matte gold, and papers are from Sustain and Heal on Etsy (the green with gold) or probably Hollander's for the blue/yellow one. The font is Audiowide, downloadable for free. Bookmark crimps and charms are from Amazon. Feel free to ask me for more deets if needed!
(knife, washi tape roll and thumbs for size, these are so, so little)
Honestly, I can't look at it, let alone hold it in my hands without laughing (which is why my sister's hands are pictured above ^^). I haven't taken a good picture of my Binderary binds just yet (three more books than I've made in the last couple of months which is a definite win) but I did want to take a picture of these which I finished up on 3/3!
This is the third year that I've done the Mini Bind Along event during @renegadeguild 's Binderary schedule (and to my shock and horror I might be... getting good at making minis?). But this year I also attended the class on customizing book nooks, since my sister got me a kit for Christmas. Both events got me looking at the community imposer and the Lilliputian size setting and thinking thoughts
Which brings me to these binds! I wanted to bind a new typeset for the Bind Along this year, so I typeset Wonderterror by peradi (just a phenomenal Star Wars gen fic about the Skywalker's eldritch connection to the Force) as a mini. (And then wasn't able to print/access that typeset in time so I bound the old one I've been using for the last two years anyway and then made the larger one with the new typeset the next day).
I ran the same typeset through the smallest size and a few days later made these bad boys! I decided to split the single fic into two volumes since the mini was already a bit thick. Because it was my first time working so small, I didn't want to also have to deal with a book the size of my thumbnail that is also wider than it is tall.
The answer to the question I got from the first two people I showed this to: Yes I can read it! I had to in order to put them together properly. I couldn't read the page numbers at that size so I had to look at the text in order to make sure one signature matched up with the next.
The two lilliputian size books are slightly different in size. I realized after making the first that it was not going to fit on the shelf in the book nook, needing to be slightly less than 2cm tall to slide into place. The second smaller one fits perfectly!
This is a Guardian zombie apocalypse AU! I'm using @helle-bored's typeset, which had a very neat stenciled/stamped aesthetic. The binding was loosely inspired by the Antarctic-published books that were bound in boards from wooden crates, but I went my own direction with the concept (in part because I wanted to practice sewing on cord with my sewing frame).
I had originally intended to give the wood a natural grayish weathered look (while I have lots of scrap wood in the basement, I didn't have anything suitable that had been sitting outside for years) but the iron acetate & tea combo that I treated the wood with had a much stronger effect than expected. I'm a fan of how it turned out though!
For the sewing, I referenced Exposed Spine Sewings by Keith Smith, this is a method that uses extra wraps around the cord to climb between signatures instead of a kettle stitch at the head and tail. The cords are laced through the boards and glued down; the furniture tacks are mostly for the aesthetic and only somewhat functional (I pre-drilled the holes they're hammered into because I was worried about the possibility of splitting the wood, so they're not in there as tight as they otherwise could be).
"Yes. Many people died in this house," Al-Haitham confirms. "Some of them are even buried on the land." And then, almost like an afterthought, he answers, "It is my house."
Bound: Heaven is a bedroom by Charlotte_Stant (Hollanov, rated E)
I adore this fic. I devoured it while travelling, and then promptly reread it two more times so I could savour it properly. It's a brilliant mix of comedy and angst, and it serves Mormon missionary Elder Hollander as well as fuckboy Ilya "MIT Grad" Rozanov in a delightful AU.
Did I fuck up the author's pseud punctuation? Yes, I did! Did I realize this at any time until JUST NOW? No, I did not!
However, bless the author for having blanket permission. Sorry for fucking up your pseud.
(Aside: Authors! Have blanket permission! It's so easy and it keeps us from nagging you, AND you get surprise binds popping up like this! I say all this as an author myself, with blanket permission!)
For this bind, I located the official LDS font (Baker Signet, if you care) so I could commit a higher level of sacrilege, using it for all the scriptural quotes and drop caps and such. I had to do a couple of pull quotes because there are just so many good ones, and of course I needed to feature the author's amazing use of *** swear censorship because it somehow stayed funny all the way through the whole fic.
I also created the faux missionary name tag art, as well as the cover design.
I used my own marbled papers for the end papers and end bands. For a minute I thought I'd flown too close to the sun with the narrow little 2mm squares I used, but look! My squares came out so well!
I also had to create a tiny faux-Mormon dust jacket just so I could shamelessly abuse Canva Christian stock art. This one features a very Mormon Jesus, as he's standing in the mountains; he also somehow looks like his parents forgot to pick him up after baseball practice.
The dusty, like Shane, is doing a poor job of pretending to be holy and righteous while actually wanting to get down with Ilya, who is DTF.
Also, yes, I did custom-draw a cross made of out dicks. I'm not even sorry about it. The SVG is available to any other binders with blasphemous intentions, just hmu.
Details:
letter quarto bind (so smol!)
short-grain 24# cream paper
2 mm board covered with Verona book cloth in sapphire, decorated using lime green HTV
end papers and end bands are marbled paper by me
spine is rounded but not backed
dust jacket title and the text on the one flap are from an LDS site, which is linked to by the author in the author's notes
dust jacket is printed on photo paper and laminated with soft-touch
with thanks to @phoenixortheflame and @citrusses for lots and lots of feedback and encouragement on the design of the cover and dust jacket
Read this fic! Leave kudos and comments!
All fanbinds by me are for personal use only and will never be sold or profited from.
Prowl was the second born creation of the King. He had always known that he was going to bond to secure an alliance for Praxus.
It was a role that was easier to accept before he had fallen in love with his best friend, a mech he never should have met in the first place.
Fandom: Transformers
Relationship: Jazz/Prowl
Rating: Explicit
Bodice ripper JazzProwl!! Very spicy with a large focus on non-penetrative interface with a plot that snuck in and made me want to kick Sentinel's ass. Need I say anything else to get some more love and attention onto this fic?
Usual spiel about construction and typesetting below with more pics.
I decided to go with a very simple white and blue color scheme, one, because it just felt very classy, and two, because it felt very bride-ish, which is Prowl's role in the story.
Tried out a new material for this bind: Neenah Paper's kivar 7 in the kidskin texture. It's very... interesting to work with? It's almost like a slightly more supple cardstock and fought me while gluing it down. It's definitely very durable though! I was able to wipe off some glue I accidentally got off the cover very easily which give me confidence it should stay that unblemished white for a while to come.
For the endpapers I made paste paper using the pearlescent paint I used for the edges.
There was a bit of a learning curve to using pearlescent paint on the edges of the book. I think maybe the pigment just isn't as fine as it is with my metallic paints because the shimmer would just hop right off if I waited after painting for the edges to completely dry before opening. Instead I had to paint, wait a minute for it to not be completely wet, and then fan the pages open. Worth it though for how pretty the edges look in the light!
The headbands were made by wrapping the cover material around hemp cord.
For typesetting, I used three fonts: Rosarivo for the body, WeddingDay Personal Use for the title page and dropcaps, and Wingdings for the little diamond used for line breaks.
For the chapter openings, I really loved how the fic opened up in Prowl's crystal garden and so I wanted to have some sort of gem/mineral for each opening based off of either it being mentioned in that chapter, vibes, or what the gem allegedly means. I actually made a little list while I was working, but ya know, past Froggie is not always the most coherent so it may not make the most sense. I'll just copy and paste it below. As a bonus it also acts as image credits!
Ch5: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hematite_(Cavradi_Gorge,Switzerland)_4.jpg (grounding, protection, stability which prowl needs)
Ch6: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tourmaline%26_aquamarine_J1.jpg (tourmaline found in garden; aqua allegedly calm, centered, relaxed but alert state with balanced energy.
Ch7: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pearl-freshwater_hg.jpg (not a gem, but first chapter with Prowl in Pearlex finish)
Ch9: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dumortierite-quartz_(Brazil)4.jpg (gain insight, jazz gives prowl info on suitors)
Ch10: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jaspe_Orbiculaire_de_Madagascar_1.jpg (malachite can be very toxic if not handled with care. Prime is toxic af here, plus kind of meaty texture is offputting like the end of chapter)
Ch11: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scol%C3%A9cite.jpg (peace and harmony, which prowl needs, but also spiky and a little imposing, like the situation they're in)
Ch12: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Labrador(spektrolit)-_Ylamaa,_Finlandia..jpg (lazutherite not a real crystal, so chose a gem with a similar name)
Ch14: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aragonite-_Pantoja,_Toledo,_Castile-La_Mancha,_Spain.jpg (came up when I looked up stones for new beginnings)
As is my way now it would seem, I started this one in September. The line in the typeset is the approximate shape of I-10, with LA chapter titles being on the west side and El Paso chapters being on the east side.
The cover was harder: I always thought of this fic as sort of a yellow, which didn't really seem right for a cover. I asked Cly for a description and they said "a warm window at night. so kind of cool blue grey purple evening and then also the warmth of a lamp. that’s so unhelpful my god" but it was, in fact, very helpful. And then this whole book proceeded to be a comedy of errors because:
I had what I thought was the perfect fabric, a sort of two-toned blue/black. I had exactly enough for the cover (thanks, Fitz!) and then proceeded to fuck it up (RIP) by first: gluing the cover (which is made of two thin pieces of board glued together, one of which has a rectangle cut in it) on upside down, so the window was on the bottom half, and then: leaving too much space around the spine.
So I made a new one with the blue moire, of which I have...plenty. Cover went fine. Got the paper window in perfectly. Did a practice run with the stamping machine (known hereonout as The Machine, to keep with my Princess Bride equipment name theme.) Measured it, then, like Icarus, though I could make a measurement adjustment on the fly and have it come out correctly. Reader, it did not:
I spent like ten minutes trying to convince myself that it was fine. But. It wasn't fine. So I started over.
Anyway. Covers 3 and 4 are what you see in the final versions. I eventually figured out that if I taped a few layers of watercolor paper on top of the cover to test the location in The Machine, I could make sure to line it up exactly correct. I also figured out that I could do this by adjusting the placement just slightly between stamps:
So maybe I'll try and do that on purpose at some point, though I'm sure that's when it'd ultimately fail me.
Anyway, the punchline of all of this is that after all of this, over the course of a few months, I made an error that was a first for me, and everyone I showed it to. The endpaper curled when I put paste on it, and I didn't notice. You kind of have to laugh:
I don't ENTIRELY hate it because there's no board showing and it gives an interesting page turn effect. but that was NOT the intended outcome. RIP. I sent the author the successful one.
YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW BEAUTIFUL IT IS i did fully cry when i opened it like oh my GOD it’s gorgeous it’s stunning it’s so so so wonderful thank you SO much it still blows my mind someone just decided to do this for fun like that’s sooooo crazy!!!! i am gobsmacked and blown away
These are both books I made as a christmas gift for my mother last year. She is a big fan of fairytales.
Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales
The endpapers are recycled papers I bought from shepherds in London, and the cover papers are marbled papers by Ann Muir that I bought there as well, specifically for this project in an effort to match the title page. The bookcloth I used is dubletta nutmeg.
Grimms' Fairy Tales
Endpapers for this one are a slightly different recycled paper from shepherds, and the cover papers are also Ann Muir papers. The bookcloth for this one is dubletta mustard
In my defense, I knew exactly what I was getting into. I just didn’t realize how much it would grow from my initial plan to what it ended up being. This is the third of my @fanartfrenzy binds, for the square "fic in my most recent fandom".
The Brooklyn Boys by @buckets-and-trees is a fun story. It starts in two places: one set of stories that are Steve Rogers x Reader, and the other set that are Bucky Barnes x Reader. Two sets of completely sweet little stories that you don’t realize are part of the same world until about five stories in.
And it’s not until about seven stories in that you realize that the Reader in both stories is the same person.
Now that I’ve spoiled you on the Big Reveal (sorry about that, unfortunately necessary to understand why I bound the stories the way I did), hopefully you can see why it would be a kick to bind.
(Please note that this post is long and image-heavy, so the rest will be under the cut.)
Since the stories start in two different places, it makes sense for the book to start in two different places, too, right? Right. I knew I wanted it to look like a normal book—though a double-sided one, with one side of the book containing Steve’s stories, and the other side, Bucky’s. So one side of the book looks like the picture above, with the yellow cover and grey spine, but the other:
Open either side and you’ll get Steve’s track on Steve’s side, and Bucky’s track on his. Get to the end of those tracks, and you find instructions to either flip and read the other track, or open to continue reading.
Here’s where it gets fun. The next story, Interlude, is where the two tracks converge, and this is where the reader should realize that the two tracks were in the same world all along. I wanted to convey that sort of “flipping” of the narrative by having the stories literally go in an unexpected and different direction—hence why you have to turn the book 90 degrees to continue reading.
And then… you literally just turn the page.
So the stories continue… still kind of on their separate tracks. We’ve got Steve’s and Bucky’s stories, running parallel but in full view. But you have to read both of them now to get to…
Steve and the Blindside is where it all comes together, when the reader (and Steve and Bucky) realize that the Reader character is the same person. It’s presented a little differently from the others, obviously, but you can’t access it unless you’ve read both Steve and Bucky’s lead-ins. And once you have read it, you reveal…
This, the final piece of the puzzle, where everything comes together. One volume, with all the remaining stories. And, on the flip side… the author’s commentary on how she came to write the story in this way.
*****
Let’s talk about the choices I made in how I bound all of this. I wasn’t originally going to make it this complicated; my original plan was to have the stories start from either end, and then once they meet in the middle, just keep going in that direction. I wasn’t sure how to make that happen, though, and in my searching trying to figure out what to do, I came across secret compartment books. I also realized that I had the base for a secret compartment book already: namely, a hardcover of HP and the Chamber of Secrets with a spine broken in three different places. Despite the fact that I don’t want copies of HP in my house anymore, I’m not a big fan of wasting something that could prove to be useful. Donating a broken copy of CoS would end up with it in the recycling bin, since the thrift store is unlikely to sell a book that’s falling to pieces. Wouldn’t turning it into something else be better? (You know. Transforming it, as it were. Yeah, terrible joke, very sorry, will delete if someone requests.) Plus, the Bucky storyline has a HP element in it, in that Bucky and the Reader character bond over HP. Using CoS as a base for this bind seemed like a good idea to me!
Which is how I decided: the broken textblocks, with one side hiding a tiny book holding the end of the story, would be CoS, and I’d build on them with the pieces leading up to that. I worked my way from the end to the beginning, binding first the tiny book (a quarto, incidentally), and including an extra-long ribbon on the spine. I then carved out the cavity in the largest of the CoS textblocks, using glue on the exposed edges (both inside and out) to give it stability. I glued the other end of the tiny book’s ribbon to the back of the hole in the textblock, then covered it with the same paper that I used for covering the tiny book, creating my hidden space. Done!
After that, I started working my way up. It took a while to think of how to lay out Blindside so that it stretched across both sides of the textblocks, but didn’t get destroyed when the textblocks were folded. I think figuring this step out was the very last thing I did—I had plans for nearly everything else—and I really like how it turned out, with the story coming from two places but needing to be read together.
Blindside, Shelves, and Ballet, are all pamphlet-bound, with a single signature sewn directly to their covers. I also included an extra piece of cardstock, folded the opposite way, which serves as a sort of anchor to the books. It’s the anchor that is glued to the texblock, and allows the reader to flip the books to the side after reading. I figured this was probably the safest way to attach the stories to the textblock, so they don’t fall out or end up in the wrong order.
All of this is hidden behind Interlude—which I’ll talk about now, but bear in mind, it was the last piece of the puzzle to be assembled. I was able to print Interlude as a single-page broadsheet on legal paper, using an accordion fold so that it would hide when the book is closed, but be fully visible once open. It’s pasted on either end to manila folders, which in turn are pasted to the textblocks. The part of the paper that is not pasted to the folders are backed by another piece of cardstock, so that they’re a little easier to read, and hopefully to prevent tearing or accidental incorrect folds.
With that done, I focused on the beginning of the story. Both Steve and Bucky’s tracks are technically perfectbound, because I needed to match the CoS textblock, and those measurements are 6x9, which is bigger than I could do as a signature with my printer. I also decided to go with perfectbound because CoS is perfectbound, and this would help match that a little better.
But in the end, I actually did stitch the pages, in a sort of single-stitch line a quarter inch from the spine, because I was worried that only having glue wouldn’t stand up to the excessive handling they would receive. (Turns out I didn’t take a picture of this—whoops. And it’s not really visible any longer either, but if Aspen looks closely when she lifts the cover, she might be able to see it.)
This ended up being super beneficial, because it gave me an anchor when attaching the covers.
About the covers:
So like I said, I used the CoS textblocks for the interior of the book. (And they’re all there, except for maybe a page or two, plus I added extra so that both sides of the book are even when it’s fully open, which lets the Interlude lay flat. I got through almost all of my misprints, yay.)
The head and endboards are the actual CoS covers as well. After separating the textblock from the cover, I cut off the original spine (which was going to be far too narrow for this, not to mention it was too rounded for my plan), and used the boards as the boards for this book. Because I needed the book to open flat, I decided to go with a secret Belgian binding… but I altered it a little bit, since I needed both sides to be readable before you actually open the book all the way, otherwise you risk tearing the booklets inside.
So, there’s actually five parts to the cover: the head- and endboards, the spine, and then what I started calling the inserts. And as luck turned out, the boards were exactly the width I needed so that the seam between them and the inserts was right where I’d done my reinforcement stitching.
I bound the head and endboards in the paper—blue for Bucky’s side, yellow for Steves, and the marblelized blue-and-yellow for the inside, and then a grey bookcloth for the inserts and spine. Black HTV and a Cricut machine did the spine decoration, and I bore the holes with this nifty tool that I found at Michaels, and worked like a charm. Then I sewed the whole thing together with embroidery thread.
Now came time to put the whole thing together. I stitched the seam between the head/endboards and the inserts to my reinforcement line, weaving back and forth to create a nice, solid connection. Once done on both sides, the book was assembled.
Mostly. Now that could lay it flat, I could paste in Interlude, and then it was finally done.
The whole thing took about two months, from the moment I started working on the layouts, to the minute I finished pasting on the cover decoration. The hardest part was trying to figure out how it would all go together, but I am so ridiculously pleased with the final result (despite my many, many misprints, and many, many mistakes, and many, many things I would fix if I were to do it again). I had so much fun trying to figure out this puzzle of a presentation, and how to do it in a way that would make sense for both the story and for a reader who might not know what to expect.
I loved doing every single part of this project. I am itching to do another secret compartment book again. (I have six more HP books, if anyone’s game to let me destroy another!) I almost want to do it again, to see if I can’t fix what I fucked up, and I also never want to do it again, because this was easily the most difficult project I’ve done to date. I am thrilled beyond words with the result.
(Things I learned: pick a book that is thick enough—if I did this again, I’d probably go with OotP so I don’t have to add more to even out the sides. Be more careful laying in the pamphlets; Bucky and the Shelves runs a bit close to Blindside, which makes it difficult to open the latter. And think double hard before doing the titles—I messed up and had to patch the cover to Bucky’s track, which was extra annoying because I had a limited amount of that paper and it took weeks to even find a good color match.)
In case you need more visual: here’s a video of the book, and me showing how it works.
Thanks for reading! Thanks so much to Aspen for her amazing story and for giving me permission to bind it. I’m happy to answer any other questions people may have.
I saw the typeset of this and thought it looked really cool, so I decided to make a couple copies of it for myself and a friend.
This project was my first time working with leather and doing cutouts in a cover. I also attempted cloth jointed endpapers as well, I quite like how they turned out. The endpapers are Ann Muir papers from shepherds in London.
The endbands are faux double core, sewn with embroidery floss. The edges are painted with watered down gold acrylic paint, and the cover is decorated using a foil quill on a silhouette machine.
I also decided to do a peller case for the copy I was giving to a friend. I couldn't find that many resources for doing it so I had to mess around trying to figure it out, but it worked in the end! Even if it does look a bit boring on the outside XD
This bind of an absolutely outstanding fic is a very experimental project made as a gift for @fantailpress.
🍃 It’s an A6 coptic binding (with coptic endbands!) using a variety of new techniques I learned during my first semester of studies as an artisan bookbinder. Check out those textured edges, for example!
🌳 The covers are made with textured paper I painted to look like tree bark, leaves preserved in glycerin on the front cover and a piece of fleece (cured by my classmate and dyed by me to look a bit like fox pelt) on the back cover.
🍁 I chose those endpapers to look a bit like green and blue kilim featured in the story.
🦊 Typesetting was done with two goals in mind: make the most out of 9200-word story in an A6 format AND using things I learned from reading Jan Tschichold’s The Form of the Book for evil purposes. So in this book you have the perfectly proportioned margins (HUGE) and a lovely classical layout for the title page (with illustration drawn by me). The rest of my typesetting choices would most likely get me cursed by Tschichold. I used a “desert-inspired” Arida for my body font and overpainted the italicized sections with a very diluted mixture of green ink and metallic acrylics (having a b/w laser printer instead of a color inkjet is a challenge but also an opportunity). The same acrylic paint was used for drop caps. The lovely printer’s ornament is from William Morris’ Love Is Enough.
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