Fanbinding: Reputations. by @outpastthemoat

Another bind for the Greece meet-up - this time for Nic, @finalfrontierpublishing. This is an absolutely fantastic gen fic that explores the personal growth and struggles of Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon following Obi-Wan's Knighting (if Qui-Gon had lived). This is one of those fics that is really cathartic, grappling with self-worth issues.

I love this fic so much and I am ecstatic because it turned out to be my favorite bind of 2023. I was aiming to evoke the aesthetic of a temple, with a beautiful floral Japanese cloth, tile-like chiyogami endpapers, and mosaic drop-caps. There's re-occuring themes of climbing temple stairs and ringing temple bells as forms of meditation and emotional release, and I was able to source art for the chapter headers to represent that. Finally, I had a lot of fun matching the sewn endbands to the fabric and coloring the top edge of the book.

Happily, I will be sending the author a copy soon as well, so I get to make two more of this book.

Name of the Game by @esamastation

Very excited to make a copy of Name of the Game!! This was one of my first ever codywan fics that I read, and I fell in love with it from the start!

There's a chess motif and heavy emphasis on seduction through strategic warfare, so I leaned in hard there. The covers are double layered, with the top black layer + cutouts in colibri uran bookcloth, and the lower layer with the marbled paper. I used this diamond pattern to evoke a chess board without going full checkerboard on it. This diamond orientation was inspired by Jasmin of Cami Press' beautiful leather binding.

I got to use crepaldi endpapers for this book, and I think they turned out lovely!

Instead of sewing the endbands I made my own with the same marbled paper as the cover. And of course, gold speckled edges!

The chess motif continues in the typeset, and the paragraph breakers change depending on who is the focus and what their possible place is on the metaphorical board!

Thank you @esamastation for all of your wonderful stories!

The Sun Swings East by @feybarn

Interior Pages:

I think I'm most proud of this full spread hexagon leading into the next fic.

Sun progression:

SW Big Bang 2020 art "not this life" by @wrennette

Inspired art "Mirror" by @lucife56

Honorable mention to cover art by hero_thief from the Big Bang who I was not able to reach. There is also a podfic for The Sun Swings East by litrapod!

The photos of the full fanbinding design can be found here.

Fanfiction Writer's Appreciation Day #2:

The Sun Swings East by @feybarn

I was consumed by the theme for this book - I wanted so bad to bring the sunrise motif into it, and I also wanted to bring back the inset mirror design. I leaned a lot harder into the hexagon shapes on this one too, and I stole the work printer for color printing for a steadily progressing sunrise.

I got super lucky that I had 4 colors of Colibri bookcloth I was able to layer to create the effect on the cover, with the sun coming over the eastern horizon. And then of course I had to give it some gradient endbands and marbled endpapers to match!

I was also very lucky to be allowed to include art by @wrennette and @lucife56 in this copy, as well as a bonus "All Those Little Things" codexwan chaser. Thank you to all of you - KJ_Feybarn, wrennette, lucife56 - all of your beautiful creations and how they interact is what makes fandom such a fantastic place. But since it is FFWAD - thank you KJ_Feybarn, for your striking and inspiring writing!

Photos of the interior typeset and how I've incorporated the fan art can be found here.

FanFiction Writers' Appreciation Day Bind #1:

On the River Someday, by @redminibike1 !

This fic is a lovely, angsty cowboy AU that I was very happy to be able to bind and send to red!

I could not help but return to a variation of the layered river cover for this fic! I wanted a river winding it's way lazily through the frontier type of vibe. Also the title font is aptly called "Bleeding Cowboys" which I got a giggle from.

For the typeset I went for a double page spread (dramatic fonts demand dramatic spreads), and chapter pages I included the byline at the top and aimed to keep it clean.

I was lucky to be able to include this beautiful art piece for the fic done by @treescantjump. This was my first color print included in a fic!

Also this golden amber Colibri bookcloth strikes me as the same satiny sheen of a well groomed bucksin horse.

I chose gold-speckled edges to finish, which I think matches these gold & white endpapers.

Fanbinding: Remedial Jedi Theology by @marbleglove

Remedial Jedi Theology is a lovely story that focuses on Obi-Wan teaching Anakin about the tenets of their faith, and I really enjoyed this focus. From the summary of the fic:

With that as part of my guiding design principles, I decided to work on a concept I'd been toying with and prepping for a while: incorporating architectural design elements from various media representations of Jedi Temples into the cover design of the book.

The corners of this border framing are drawn from screenshots of a temple from one of the SW's video games (helpfully taken for by by @thearchitectlens!)

I drew the filigree pattern, scanned it into Affinity Designer, and cleaned it up for use. I made a connecting border then within the program based on some of the columns seen here and elsewhere. I'm very happy with how it turned out!

Endpapers are sage marbled lokta, and cover cloth is green apple Colibri.

@aetherseer did a lovely typeset for this fic as part of @renegadepublishing's annual exchange, which I was lucky to use!

Fanbinding: Through a Glass, Darkly by @glimmerglanger

Summary:

So! another glimmerglanger fic ahaha. They're all fantastic, but I was particularly inspired here. I had found some hexagon mirrors at a dollar store and was determined to use them in a binding.

There's a lot of imagery of Anakin seeing his other self through a dark glass, and I wanted to follow that here by putting the word "darkly" inside the mirror, not sitting on top. So the word is etched into the reflective back of the mirror and painted over there. I lucked out and happened to have some chiyogami with a cracked effect, so I put that to good use here!

In addition to the mirror, I had several other new things I tried out on this one: drop caps, foiling the endcaps, making my own bookcloth, and designing the latticework around the mirror.