#rebinding

[runawaymarbles]

Fanbinding(ish): Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir

Leather on bookboard, with hot foil stamping on the spine. The endpapers are a Japanese wave design, partially as a reference to Canaan House being on the water, and is also a reference to the fact that this book was a birthday present for @eebeesee, who is a giant weeb. (Fun fact: I bought that paper in 2012 and have been waiting uh, 11 years, to find the perfect project for it.)

Process under the cut.

Remember two months ago when I said I wasn't wild about doing another paperback-to-hardback conversion? Well. More fool me. (I did try and find a sewn hardback to take apart, but apparently this book was not sold as a sturdy hardback. Cue rant.)

I've tried debossing with leather before, so obviously, for embossing, I decided I'd just pick the most complicated design possible. I had to modify the skull a bit--taking out the IX, which did NOT cut well, and I had to make the lines around the glasses thicker.

After several hours of cricut cutting and experimentation, here is the cover pre-leather. (I also had to floss the skull's teeth with an awl to get some fuzz out, which I found very funny.)

Then, leather:

As you can see, I lose a lot of details in the teeth there, so I went around the edges with a heated brass stylus.

I bought a special skull stamp for the spine: it definitely wasn't made for heat, because while it did serve the purpose, it also came with a metal handle which made handling it awkward. (Oven mitts did not give me the necessary amount of dexterity. I ended up sort of wrapping a paper towel around the handle. My cousin has since informed me that we do own fire resistant gloves, but I did not remember this at the time.)

The stamp was also a pain to get even: it had to be at juuuuust the right temperature and pressure, or you'd either get too much or too little, as shown. It was also pretty picky about foil, but the brass color matched the endband cloth and insides best anyway, so that worked out. (White was a definite no.)

The other fun bit of this was doing the edges: I did them with black foil, but as we established in my earlier foiling experiments, that's not the most reliable. I think I got the best results so far on the top, but kept getting flakes on the others. I ended up painting the outside edge with ink, and then foiling on top of that. The bleed onto the pages ended up looking pretty neat, but since I hadn't done it on the top, I didn't do it on the bottom so that it wouldn't look weird on the inside. I'm not sure the foil added as much gloss as I was hoping for so next time I might just do the ink.

It did mean that I had to separate all the pages twice; I ended up bringing this to my girlfriend's haircut appointment and working on it in the corner. I hope it was the most strangely specific thing the stylist had seen someone doing when they tagged along.

[perfectlynormalbooks]

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewksi - hardcover rebind of my own softcover copy, because a book like this deserves a fancy hardcover edition.

Tried some fun new tricks with this one - I sewed on headbands to it, with a thin strip of House-colored blue in the centres, and an even thinner strip of red within that. Used wax paper transfer to press the polaroid photographs from the original spine onto the fore-edges. The black square on the front and back is an inset lined with black velvet. This is a very, very nice book to hold. Can't wait to settle down in my lovely house and reread it all over again wait why are the walls moving

[szynkaaa]

The Shepherd King duology by Rachel Gillig

paperback to hardcover recasing, done for @thebinarybookbinder

I was struggling to come up with a good design for the series because I know how much it is cherished by Binarybookbinder, but I've also always wanted to play with the idea of a book cover design being one big illustration when lined up, so I came up with the idea of splitting Elspeth's face in half, with one cover being her face, and the second cover alluding to the Nightmare card kinda popping out of the frame

Full illustration with the correct colors can be seen here

[zhalfirin]

Die Mumins - Tove Jansson (The Moomins)

(Keep reading for full cover pictures, close ups of the endbands with a peek of the endpapers and links to the individual book posts)

Round up of my re-binding project of the Moomins books. I really enjoyed making them, but I'm also happy the project is complete now.

Back and front covers of the each of the books.

While I used some of the designs chosen for the book edition I had bought, I altered pretty much each of them to fit the size needed and/or also have an image on the back cover instead of the solid colour and a summary the published edition had.

The titles are printed with a metal cliché that I had custom made for that another binding and chose to use, instead of going for the full titles of the books. To indicate the volume I opted for dots above the title.

Endbands

I tried to also use the endbands to tie the different books together and picked one thread to be the leather colour or previous book and the others to fit the cover. I'm mostly happy how they came out. Only in the 3. book (where the colour shifts from violet to yellow-orange) the bead looks a bit irregular. Bead on the edge is simply not the endband style meant to be worked in such a pattern. I still like how it came out.

See the individual volumes here 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

This is the metal cliché btw

[rainreignrayn]

mockingjay! part 3 of rebinding the hunger games series in honor & preparation of @hungergamesbooks Sunrise on the Reaping! linked on my etsy 🏹

[mythrilthread]

I rebound This Is How You Lose the Time War because I wanted MORE COLORS.

(And also maybe the idea of using that tweet by Bigolas Dickolas as a blurb tickled me greatly. Because that whole situation was a highlight of my month.)

❤️ Did the cover with the same birds but added plot relevant double exposure effect I’ve loved since my True Detective days.

💜 Used purple fabric for the spine, painted the edges in a fun gradient, sewn the endbands;

💙 and used lovely fluid art by Marek Okon for endpapers.

Now no one in my household stands a chance of avoiding exposure to this gorgeous story ❤️💜💙

[moonboundbooks]

👢 The Complete Novels of Jane Austen 👢

This was my contribution to the #averyspringaustenexchange made for the wonderful @ldm.binding!

So fitting that it is the 250th anniversary since Jane Austens birth. What kind of world would it be without her works? I dont want to fathom.

Another embroidery though this one was made months ago, Im so happy with how it came out. Really wanted a beautiful spring color so the cloth really pulled through!

[vellichorbindery]

LOTR rebind for a childhood friend’s bday featuring my baby Nyx who can’t keep her little paws out of anything 💗

[cupidofcrimeee]

Camp Folktale (summer of '86) - cairparavels

So I had this one bound and finished for ages, but it always felt incomplete. I still think it feels incomplete and too simple and I can't figure out what to add to it, so decided to post it.

But this is a favorite Steddie fic of mine.

Art: commissioned from @toktopus-art

Bookcloth: hollanders

Vinyl: htvront and vinyl frog green foil

Charm: Etsy

Typeset: me

[ohmightydevviepuu]

valdemar, part iii: books that blooded me

i said six months, didn't i? 😅

this is the last of the paperbacks that get a flatback rebind. there's a consistent mistake i've been making, and i think i'm finally ready to face it: over-trimming the endpapers. it's stopping me from getting a really good fit in the spine. i'm also still not reliably getting a really crisp hinge, even with my brass-edged boards. alas.

STILL. aren't they pretty? i'm still obsessed with the iridescent stickers, and i'm loving the little pops of color (here provided by duo and by dubletta bookcloth, respectively) on the spines.

the next/final tranche gets SLIPCASES, wheeee.

adventure awaits.

[armoredsuperheavy]

The Complete Raffles, Annotated (Rebind)

Who is Raffles?

Written by E. W. Hornung, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law, dedicated to ACD, and inspired by the Sherlock Holmes stories, but starring A.J. Raffles, a gentleman of leisure and recreational crime rather than a detective. Accompanied by his admiring friend and narrator, nicknamed "Bunny", mischief is afoot.

It's very shippable, and if you have an interest in historical fiction, Edwardian London, or are a Holmes/Watson fan, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

The Annotated Version

I originally found the annotated stories on the Raffles Redux website and was struck how complete and informative the annotations assembled by Sarah Morrissey and Genevieve L. Morrissey were. In addition to explaining many obscure things the modern reader would otherwise have completely missed, they also collected profuse illustrations from past editions.

I was dismayed that this great addition to the original, public domain Raffles tales was only available (at the time) in this ephemeral form. My reading was greatly enhanced by all these insights into the period and places of the stories. When I recently discovered it was available in an Amazon print on demand edition I immediately bought it.

What a bittersweet experience it was to have the text! Yes! YES! The text is out! In a nice big block with breathing room for the annotations and a handsome typeset at that! What a thoughtful design, but what else should I have expected, considering how well done the annotations were?!

But what was bitter, you ask? Well, that cheap thin cardstock cover, which immediately curled up like Hokusai's Great Wave after I perused 3 pages of the first story. This was infuriating. This book deserves so much better. But! We have the means of production. I couldn't do anything about the "perfect-bound" spine, but i could definitely fix this woefully inadequate cover.

Views of the text, annotations, illustrations.

Let's Rectify This Injustice

I sliced the covers off and removed as much paper from the spine as possible. Scrounged out a moderately "old timey" sheet big enough for endpapers, cut and attached them. Glued mull and an Oxford hollow type kraft paper tube on this bad boy. And then built a case, using the remainder of the endpapers sheet to stretch the book cloth supply.

Then, fortuitously, from the discarded flimsy cover, I was able to salvage the JC Leyendecker portrait of Raffles. This piece was originally done for Collier's magazine, and oozing "late Edwardian cruising". Brother can you spare a light? JCL was a magician.

A sleep overnight in the press and now the complete annotated Raffles (x Bunny of course) finally has the proper treatment, complete with that exquisite side eye right where it deserves to be.

I am Back (ElmoFire.gif)

This is my first finished book project in 4 years. It felt great to get back into it.

I'm finishing up a number of Dead Dove Publishing projects that were partially done when I ground to a halt in summer of 2020. Wish me luck and stay tuned for more...

ArmoredSuperHeavy, 25 Dec 2024

Fanbinding project #162

[notgilderoylockhart]

A Bright Ray of Darkness by Ethan Hawke is definitely one of my favorite books this year and one of my all time favorite audiobooks.

It took me a while to decide on a design for the rebind though. I think I made 8 designs in total until I finally settled on this one. I wanted to incorporate the burnt match, as well as the smoke from the original cover but filling the empty space around that alone proved difficult.

To fill that empty space, I added the title and finally, as I was trying to figure out a design for the back cover and watching this production of Henry IV on YouTube, another idea came to me.

A central plot point is a production of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, so I designed a little playbill for the back. And to tie both the front and the back design together I put some of Hotspur’s (our protagonist’s role in the play) dialogue on some scrap book cloth with a hot foil quill and added a "burnt edge" in gold vinyl.

I’m totally in love with it, not just because I love shiny things.

[wagtailcrafts]

First actually completed project of binderary: a rebind of Norwegian Wood for my colleague who never shuts up about this book

Maybe I'll read it one day

[flowerhawk-highinthesky]

Rebind of the Song of Achilles as a gift

[zhalfirin]

Herbst im Mumintal - Tove Jansson (Moominvalley in November)

Half leather binding

materials used:

inner book textblock - purchased book in signatures, (partially repaired with japanese tissue paper) endpapers - lokta, backed with Schirting (thin, seized fabric) endbands - buttonhole silk

case boards - grey board 1,5mm spine stiffener - cardboard covering material, spine - leather (vegetable tanned) covering material boards - laser printed publishing paper cover art - original by Tove Jansson (altered for this case) title - hot stamped with genuine gold foil

original case of the purchased book

[rainreignrayn]

rebinding the hunger games series in honor & preparation of Sunrise on the Reaping! linked on my etsy 🏹