A princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs

Full cloth binding, backed with french grove and paper onlays, coloured edge and french double core endands.

The typeset was part of Renegade's Tiny Books Bang event last year, but it took me forever to get enough distance to come up with my own cover instead of copying the wonderful bind that was exchanged in the event.

This wonderful typeset was provided by @tinwhiskerpress

Bound: All Our Gifts at Once, or, the Young Sea-Man by @tiltedsyllogism

This was a bind for one of my Fandom Trumps Hate auctions. It's a wonderful Sherlock fic/Little Mermaid AU. It's really quite beautiful and moody and atmospheric.

It's set in Victorian England, so I went pretty old-fashioned with my design, and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Each chapter opening page has a map of the area in the chapter title. I love the subtle "mermaid scale" detail of the end papers too.

I’m kind of obsessed with the fonts. For the body, I wanted something a bit old-fashioned. I have no idea if the one I chose, Schoolbook, is era-appropriate, but it just feels right. And I have used the cover/chapter title font, Roman Antique, on another bind, and I just really love it, particularly in italic. It has these wonderful alternate glyphs for many of the letters, and it lends itself to making a simple but beautiful design.

I don't often include the author notes in a bind, but these added so much to the story that I opted to leave them in.

More details:

Thanks again to @tiltedsyllogism for bidding on my auction!

fanbinding: let's sail away (an anthology)

a flatback casebinding! WOOT!!

(this is, to date, my first and most successful flatback after the demo i made in bookbinding class)

the binding flatback casebinding as demonstrated in introduction to bookbinding and custom cases by tom and cindy hollander. glued headbands. duo bookcloth in oatmeal.

did the cutout on my silhouette portrait. covered the cutout with the bookcloth, cut and cleaned up the fabric, and laminated the davey board to that layer before gluing the text block.

cutout design is a converted embroidery pattern from UrbanThreads traced with a foil quill using the silhouette portrait.

HTV is siser twinkle for the stars / metallic gold for the titles.

the story an anthology of short Captain Swan fics from sambethe, including two no longer online from my personal archive.

An Iron Blood Tale: Iron and Gold

An Iron Blood Tale: Iron and Gold by @experi-sketches

My second bind for (Fan) Fic Writer Appreciation Day.

This fic is ridiculously good and my favorite story that i found last year.

The whole inspiration for this book was inspired by one particular scene from the fic.

For the custom endpapers, i foiled on the tagline(theme?) of the fic, onto some art that matched the overall design elements.

I had a lot of fun working on the typeset for this - though it took me way to long to sit down and complete. I had a pretty clear vision for it, until i completely did a 180 and changed my mind lol. Which I'm glad i did as this typeset came out so well.

The story title pages and map - I LOVE when books have maps in the beginning so i was super excited to format the map.

Each chapter had a title, but I decided to keep the chapter images the same and to go with the cover design.

Threads, connectivity, and intertwining play a big role in this fic and I tried to incorporate the idea as much as possible.

I'm very happy with how this book turned out, especially the htv layering. Quite surprised on how smoothly it went on the first time tbh.

This bind was done as part of @renegadeguild Renegade Loves Fic(Writers), as a way to show appreciation to all the fic writers out there that share your amazing stories with us, by sending out a copy to them.

Thank you @experi-sketches for this lovely fic <3

HAPPY (FAN) FIC WRITERS APPRECIATION DAY

August 21st is FFWAD: Fan Fic Writer’s Appreciation Day! This year, I’m delighted to share the books I made to celebrate @cesperanza and the years of brilliant fanfic she’s given us.

Some Strange Prophecy is a Due South fic—a show that premiered 30 years ago and remains one of my all time favorites. I knew that at some point this year I would want to bind something that would celebrate the show’s premiere, and it made perfect sense to bind one of Speranza’s—and it didn’t hurt that the fic itself is 20 years old this year, and just an absolute masterpiece.

The cover for this book is an abstract representation of Bennie’s uniform, bound in red moire with HTV decorations.

I pulled out a piece of Peggy Skycraft marbled paper for the endpapers (Skycraft is a renowned marbler whose work is in the Met, and I had gotten a batch of her amazing work in a recent auction).

The fic is just over 50k words, so it fit perfectly in a legal quarto size. The endbands are a traditional silk two color bead-on-front style.

But wait! That isn’t all! I also bound two tiny books (legal sextodecimos) to celebrate Speranza and some of the other amazing fic she’s given us. I had asked for permission to bind SSP, but these two little Stargate Atlantis fic were a surprise for her—War Bride and Ordinary Life (the latter co-written with @astolat , whose books I’ve bound before).

War Bride was bound in Neenah Paper fake leather, and Ordinary Life in Colibri book cloth, both as 3 piece Bradels with hot foil decorations.

Thank you again, @cesperanza , for all the wonderful fic you’ve written and shared with us over the years. It’s been a joy sharing fandoms with you!

process post for the courtship ritual of the hercules beetle~

i knew i wanted a hercules beetle on the front cover, so i decided i might as well model and print it myself since i doubted id be able to find something that fit my vision and would be flat enough for the cover of a book

me, thinking that three color double core is so much easier than two color, not yet realizing that it was because i've been color changing all wrong the whole time:

shiny golden beetle after i'd sanded and painted it~

final case just before i glued on the beetle! the cutout-inlay thing was made by cutting through a piece of 2mm board and gluing down the cloth tabs like a regular cutout, and then gluing another 1mm board behind it before gluing the turn ins.

shorter process this time, partially because the main new thing was making the beetle, and also partially because i seem to be getting worse at documentation. i wish i'd remembered to take pictures of the cutout process ahhhh

The Courtship Ritual of the Hercules Beetle by kittebasu

Bound for the @renegadeguild Fanfiction Writer's Appreciation Day event.

Mumins wundersame Inselabenteuer - Tove Jansson

(Moominpappa at sea)

The latest book I made: won my bride in a poker game by @primtheamazing! It's one of my favourite fics and reread it often enough that I really needed a copy of it. I cannot recommend it enough. :)

The cover was a lot of experimenting (it's marbled paper with a vellum overlay that has the title printed on, which was rather fiddly to do) but I'm really pleased with how it turned out! Some more details to show off the typeset and the marbled paper for the endpapers:

I'm uploading a series of tutorials on how to foil/gild your book edges. More soon!

Bookbinding of Wires got the best of him by TheBigCat @perfectlynormalbooks, June 2024.

Tiny book one for this year's Renegade Tiny Books Bang! Typesetting by the author, who collaborated with me to choose the colors and cover design for the book, which I bound. Lovely to work with you :D

Materials: Text laser printed on Hammermill "cream" archival printer paper. Covers and tapes made of two different colors of blue Verona bookcloth, with cover design painted on with gold metallic nail polish. The binding uses cotton thread coated in beeswax and archival PVA glue. Endpapers are marbled Italian paper by London-based artist Stephan Parenti (Peacock Paper studio).

I have successfully used non-structural endpapers on this, I forget what it's formally called, but anyway the pages are held to the cover by the tapes and stitching. Compare this to modern mass-produced hardbacks, which are usually held in by the endpapers: that's why many books can be accidentally torn completely out of their covers, especially if the book is thick.

Free Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Typeset

I had a lot of fun doing this typeset for Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. Got to break out the fishy art assets 🐟 I don't think the text I found had all the illustrations by Neuville, Riou and Hildibrand (and the artists weren't credited where I found the images, but I tried to be as accurate as I could. If there's any mistakes or miscredits, please let me know). I think they originally had a combined number of 111 illustrations for Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, but, uh, that's a lot, and they weren't all in the file I had unfortunately.

The typeset is sized for half letter (letter folio) and is available for FREE at the link below. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1S2wl_PuxCupofnDpqGuk7VjMHYFMWC6g?usp=sharing

If this was helpful, please consider leaving a like/reblog, and follow this blog for future free typesets! Also, if there's any errors in any of the files, feel free to let me know so I can fix them! Thanks!

This is the first of two books I bound for @renegadeguild's Tiny Books Bang.

The story is (don't) take this the wrong way by @delimeful and was typeset by @little-cat-press for the Tiny Books Bang. It's a mermaid AU of Sanders Sides (Web Series), which I had never actually heard of before. But when I saw that it was a merperson AU, this idea popped into my head and I knew I had to try it, especially after I read the story and really enjoyed it.

The inspiration is medieval girdle books, which are books whose covering material (typically leather) extended past the book to a knot that was both used as a handle when reading the book and could be tucked into the girdle when the book was not in use, thus the name.

Where my book is much smaller (it's a sextodecimo, about 2.25" by 2.75") it isn't designed to tuck into a belt/girdle, but rather is attached to a bracelet and dangles from the wrist when not in use.

When I think of mermaids, some things that come to mind are fish, treasure, and tridents, and I wanted to incorporate all three in the design. The book is covered in blue bookcloth, and then covered again in crocheted netting that was meant to bring to mind fishnets. I crocheted the netting from cotton-poly sewing thread doubled up. I incorporated a trident into the filet crochet, which is repeated on both the front and back covers. I blocked it on a piece of blotting...board? paper? It's soft and thick and meant to absorb moisture and came with my book press that started life as a flower press.

I then sewed the netting to the bookcloth covering the boards with teeny tiny stitches. It probably took twice as long to crochet the netting as it did to the rest of the binding combined, but I really like how it turned out.

The bracelet I picked to attach the netting to is gold-colored to invoke the idea of sunken treasure. Rather than attaching the netting from one end to the other, I folded both ends to the middle and attached it like that so when you have the book open it lays more nicely.

The design of the endpapers looks like looped thread, and also reminds me of netting. I secured the bookmark to the bottom of the text block and let it hang from the top, which works better when the book is hanging from the wrist and doesn't get caught in the netting. I also sewed a little starfish charm to the end of the bookmark.

Technical details:

Things I liked about this bind:

Things I'd like to change/improve for next time:

Overall feels: Loved it! I enjoyed the story, the design came out pretty much exactly how I envisioned it, overall I'm well pleased.

I Sing the Salmon Home: Poems from Washington State is an anthology of poems collected by Rena Priest inspired by the cycles, spirit, and wisdom of salmon. The book is bound bradel-style in salmon parchment drummed over mirrored boards, depicting salmon as they transform on their journey from saltwater sea to freshwater waterfall. The edges are graphite, with the top edge gauffered in the style of salmon scales.

Salmon parchment made and naturally dyed by the binder. Board. Original text block. Hook Pottery endsheets. Reflective mylar film. Graphite edges. Embroidery thread.

Part of the Guild of Bookworkers Traveling Exhibition: Night Circus, opening in Boston, MA in October, 2024.

Wildfire by tears_of_a_clown

made as a gift for a friend! i can finally post it now that she's got it ^-^

construction notes and comments in the read more

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (🏴‍☠️)

Did a leather bookbinding and tooling class last month (along with @mourningmountainsbindery!) - definitely have things to improve on as soon as I figure out how to run a propane burner in my workspace without accidentally asphyxiating myself.