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[firebound-press]

Bound: The Star Splitter by @oflights

If there is one thing I am not, it is patient. The minute I finished this fic, I ran off to ask the author for permission to bind it. I'm so happy I'll get to have this one on my shelf!

I spent a lot of time (for me, anyway) on the typeset. I wanted the chapter pages to be special but also was afraid that if I printed them in color, they'd bleed through (like what happened with The Man Who Lived.) But I didn't think I'd be able to fit the text block in my guillotine if I used a heavier weight paper.

Happily, I was able to use the heavier paper and the chapter pages and illustrations (by the absolutely incredible @littlewinnow) without any bleedthrough on the back.

I made the end papers with illustrations off pixabay and foil toner. Do I love them? Not as much as I wish I did. I may do something slightly different for the author copy. We'll see. (Mostly I don't love the color of the cardstock I printed on.)

So once I was happy with the text block, I had to think about the cover. I didn't want to do yet another navy book, so I almost went with black, but I decided to peruse the fabric store for starry printed fabric, and brought home a couple of options. I decided I liked this one the best.

I was also nervous about this because I've never used printed fabric on a cover, and I was worried how the title would look. So I reconfigured my original design to make it legible. Oh, and thanks Joann's for having this holographic HTV on clearance! I love how it looks a million different colors, depending on the light and the angle and what it's reflecting.

Now. Go read this lovely fic if you haven't already!

[firebound-press]

My magnum opus, the jewel of my Binderary round-up, the result of four months of hard work (that is to say, a lot of force applied over distance), the project affectionately known as The Motherfuckers (because it was rather unclear if I was going to finish these books or if they were going to be the end of me).

Force over Distance by cleanwhiteroom. It is currently also on AO3.

I was first introduced to this incredible story by a dear friend, who first sold me on actually watching SGU, and then said that they remember this fic since like 2011, which is always a promising sign. I went digging and found out I was in luck - the story was being rewritten and reuploaded on the author's blog. The next two weeks are described by the same friend as "one of the scariest moments in our cohabitation" as I'd spent literally every waking moment injecting the story directly into my eyeballs, and let me tell you, I'd not been doing a lot of sleeping at that time.

Then I gathered up my courage and reached out to CWR re: my burning desire to bind this story. And the rest, well. Let's dig into it, shall we?

This was my first time typesetting 540k words. Considering I tend to prefer larger font sizes for increased legibility, it was immediately obvious that this was going to be a multivolume project. I settled on three, as it's the relationship between three individuals that forms the core of the story.

I also knew I wanted to keep the typeset in black and white, but play around with light and dark a lot. So I did. One of the first design idea I actually had was the way I wanted to handle projected speech. Mental link between Young, Rush and Destiny is THE most vital part of the story, and I wanted to make it immediatly obvious. I also wanted to be able to take one glance at the page and tell how much of the action is actually just two guys staring each other down :) Hence the blackout effect of thoughts being represented as light over darkness.

I also wanted to preserve as much of my reading experience as possible. So I saved all the chapter quotes/summaries in the TOC, and hid the chapter content warnings in the frame of the gate that marks the beginning of each chapter. For most of the chapter the warnings stay the same, so after a while you stop really noticing them, but then you open a new chapter and see that the familiar shape of the words has changed, and get this UH-OH feeling. Which, I think is very much how it works in my design, because when the warnings change there's usually another line of text added.

For flashbacks and dream sequences I switched from italics to a lighter shade of gray. I woudn't say it's more legible per say, but it's in keeping with the overall light/dark theme.

There are instances of people using handwritten notes in the story. I collected more than a dozen of assorted handwriting fonts, with each character having their own "handwriting". So when, for example, someone begins writing in someone else's hand, you immediately know it.

The most insane, labor-intensive part of the typeset, however, was the way I decided to handle the Ancient translations. CWR's gone through the trouble of setting up hover-to-discover for it, which gives you a very different reading experience than, say, having the translations in the endnotes. So, naturally, I said to myself that I want to replicate that, and footnotes just won't do the trick. So. Every instance of Ancient in the text has an underlay of light gray Ancient script. And an OVERLAY of paper vellum with the translation printed in blue. Now, not to toot my own horn too much, but if looks SICK AS FUCK. You also MAYBE SHOULD NOT LIVE LIKE THIS. For the two copies of this work I had to cut up 10 sheets of vellum into strips, and then spent from 20 minutes to an hour per volume tipping the strips in their proper places. I then had to wear kinetic tape on both my hands to help with the joint pain. (It was worth it.)

Now for the title spread. It is also paper vellum that you see as soon as you turn the first page (the half-title), and see it covering the title of the book and author's name. And then you turn it. And the shields sing the matter wave of Destiny through the black. And yeah, I think that's very, very clever of me, actually.

Then, of course, were the endpapers. All 12 of them are unique abstract paintings done on black cardstock by hand with brush pens and correction tape, I scanned a sample of each set for posterity. All of them are my interpretations of characters' midscapes. For volume 1 I went with the fire wind of Rush's thoughts. Volume 2 was for Young, and I went for the reverse blackout poetry effect (because for all the mental talking they do, the unprojected thoughts are opaque to their counterparts) and all the loops, hairpins and blocks he does. Volume 3 is for the combination - Rush's fire wind, changing its color to match the circuitry pattern of Destiny's AI.

The rest, in comparison, is easy. All volumes are stitched with 3 strands of embroidery floss, a combination of black, blue and silvery-gray. The French double-core endbands are sewn in the same color scheme (though with a different shade of blue and gray switched for white for added contrast). The edges are painted and splattered to look like space.

The covers feature my (signature at this point, I guess) half-cloth river pattern, with the base being dark blue linen and the printed parts being Spitzer telescope images of the W51 star forge, Jack-O'-Lantern Nebula and the Eagle Nebula (courtesy of NASA), waxed by hand for added sheen. The spines are foiled in silver with a foil quill.

Each set is 5 pound of solid hand-crafted book, with one set being my personal copy, and the other sent as a gift to the author.

And that's it, folks! This has been an incredible project to work on, and I'm very proud of what I achieved with it.

[firebound-press]

The House of Aunts by Zen Cho

Well, it's been a while since I updated, and not for nothing. The fasting month has arrived and much of my weekend energy is preoccupied elsewhere. Also, there are several longfics that are currently WIP, full completion uncertain.

So imagine my feelings as they got slammed against the wall by this: The House of Aunts by the Malaysian-born Zen Cho. An original vampire fiction that is set in Malaysia, uses traditional Malaysian monsters die Dracula, and deals with issues that hit close to home for anyone living in this part of the world, such as overbearing parental figures, unspoken religious and ethnic boundaries, and familial shame.

Since the story is Malaysian at heart, I decided to use Malaysian pictures and themes.

The book cover is actually made from drawing paper, printed with the image of a rubber plantation to evoke the story's setting. The front side has a glued-on image of a frangipani flower - the flower of the undead in Malaysian stories — surrounded by Baba Nyonya tilework — the Baba being Chinese Malaysians who settled and intermarried with locals.

The printed endapapers threw me off. I wanted to have a tilework or frangipani motif, but none of the free internet sources came up with anything distinctive. I did eventually find a peculiar color gradient that reminds me of twilight, considered the time when Malaysian monsters strike the most.

The Malaysian motifs continue at the title page, where I used Baba Nyonya tilework and Malay woodcraft motifs to frame the title. Same thing too with the copyright page — believe it or not, I actually intended that part to be minimalist! But one curious placement of images led to another and soon, I was looking up different websites to find the right Malaysian decorative features to bedight the logos!

The story is divided into three parts, and I also wanted the headers to be minimalist. Something of that won out here more, as I decided to use plumerias to highlight the 'undead' parts of the story and the greyscale tilework/woodwork to highlight the human connections of the main character, whether they were broken or not.

This bind took me less than a week and it was actually refreshing to get my hands busy again. Full rights to the story goes to Zen Cho, who really deserves all the awards for writing a monster tale that hits at so many themes, it's quintessentially Malaysian!

[firebound-press]

Before anything else by anotperegrine

IMPORTANT NOTE: I began this bookbind before February and was well on the way to completing this (actually my second try, more on that later) when the whole abuse situation with Wilbur and Shelby became known. I was incensed, but channeled that anger into finishing this project out of pure spite.

This man will not destroy the love I have for this fic and the passion poured into it by both the fic author, fanartist, and me.

I rarely get engaged with the goings-on in the QSMP, and even then it's mostly towards my blorbos Philza and Missa (see my previous ficbinds). But Quackbur or TNTDuo has a certain small spot in my heart due to their tension and chemistry within the Dream SMP, and it was through that which I found this delightful number of a fanfic.

Before anything else by anotperegrine is a DSMP + QSMP fanfic where Quackity from Las Nevadas wakes up in a different world, where wars did not happen and a familiar face has a child. Cue extrapolation, angst, and a yearning for something he thought he could never have.

This fanfic is a sewn-board bind with inter-layered color papers (printed with black designs or title belts) glued on top of each other to make the covers. But it wasn't meant to be this way.

I had actually tried to make a 'first edition' of this bind, so to speak. It was supposed to be a bradel bind with a similar cover design. Unfortunately; (1) I did not measure the back cover properly, which (2) led to rough adjustments, which (3) led to improper casing, which (4) led to scrunched endpapers, which (5) applied pressure which distorted the text block, which then (6) forced open the front cover... it was a mess.

Also, I did not anticipate a gap between the top/bottom covers which became noticeable when I glued the middle strip. Ooops.

Hence, a 'second edition' redo.

The second try went much better, and I even made a successful experiment! Up till now, I have used tissue paper to strengthen the spines of my binds. After consulting some people over in the Renegade Publishing discord I decided to take a chance and applied an altogether different material: medical gauze.

Surprisingly, it worked! After gluing, the spine became stiff yet opens with a flexibility that exceeds using normal tissue paper. I'm definitely using gauze for my future binds!

Thanks to @anonperegrine for making the fic, with an additional thanks to javenvee on Twitter for her okaying with me using her fanart!

[firebound-press]

Todays bind! Fools Gold, by @tigers1o1 !!

Personally, I absolutely adore the paper and bookcloth combination on this bind. I got the cloth a while back for free and I’ve been waiting for a chance to use it, and then my friend Cam got me this paper as a gift! It seemed way too perfect to not use!

This was a very exciting bind, because it gave me the opportunity to try something completely new, gilded edges!!

Although it didn’t turn out perfect, I’m still super proud of how clean it ended up. Plus, I personally think the flaws make it better :D

The typesetting here was very exciting for me. A few months ago Ty held a tattoo contest for the fic, and I couldn’t not use them when I saw the two finalist designs. So I went ahead and contacted the artists, and they both said I could use them!!

Title page design: @eldrigeonsss

Chapter header design: @sheeeeeeeepherd

Thank you both again for letting me use your beautiful work!

You can read the fic here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42798252/chapters/107512251

[firebound-press]

Behold!! My first ever tiny books!! Robin Hood and the Little Trickster, and Future Past!

Both these books are apart of the Future Past series by Enira, though Robin Hood and the Little Trickster is also written by cruellae :D

This project was actually a gift for my wonderful friend @totallynotpuri! Hi puri I love you!!

I’ll be entirely honest, these two were really difficult for me. For whatever reason I had a really hard time getting started, so I ended up putting off the project for months. But it’s ok, because I got it done eventually!

Both books feature some beautiful art by reveriesky, which is very very fun.

The big thing I’m proud about for this one is the contrast between the two. I really wanted them to stand out when side by side, hence why I chose the silver on black and black on white. They’re both part of a pair, not complete without the other :3c

The books with a pen for size comparison

[firebound-press]

A year and a half ago, I made a post about @renegadepublishing launching their code of conduct. I’m pleased to report the community has been thriving, and is abuzz with even more growth!

Over the past year and a half:

The Discord size has doubled.

The membership has skyrocketed to nearly 200 members.

Our events have also doubled in participation!

We’ve started four brand new events!

We’ve launched 12 satellite servers with 414 members!

All this, and yet, there’s more to come! I’m pleased to announce yet another massive undertaking has finally come to fruition…

THE RENEGADE BOOKBINDING GUILD WEBSITE!

Renegade has grown so much and still remains such an incredible, vibrant community, and this step forward will only enable us to do so much more. There is still more work to be done, but it’s absolutely amazing how far we’ve come. I can’t wait to keep building this community with all the wonderful people in it! 🎉

We’re currently kicking off Binderary 2024 with a bang, with 34 workshops planned for the month of February, all completely free and community-run!

If you’re waiting for a sign, this is it! Come join us, and start your fanbinding journey!*

*Discord is 18+ only!

[firebound-press]

Binderary 2024: Week 1

In the Renegade Bindery Discord Server, we are once again running Binderary during the month of February. Attendance is free, and a link to the 18+ Discord Server can be found on our carrd.

Whether you’re new to the world of bookbinding or an aged veteran, join us for a month of binding fun! This event is all about community & learning, be it trying something new or refining existing skills.

All our workshops are run by members of our fanbinding community, and some of them are even on Tumblr!

Here's the list of who's running the week 1 workshops:

Renegade Wrap-up 2023!: @robins-egg-bindery, @fanboundbooks, @celestial-sphere-press Split Board Bindings!: @misanthropiczombie Decorative techniques: from paint pen to gold leaf.: @blackoakbindery Affinity publisher tutorial (Beginner Workshop): @kate2kat Typesetting & Book Design for Beginners: @bearclubbooks Typesetting Digital Formats: @sayornispress Typesetting in Word 365 for PC: @no-name-publishing

[firebound-press]

(never) let me go by @perhaps-sunlight​​​​

When Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts for eighth year, he meets a new classmate: Tom Riddle.

For better or for worse, he’s the only one who does.

For design info / materials / binding process, read below the cut.

Keep reading

[firebound-press]

If Living Can Be This (MDZS)

If you asked me last year, after having bound a MDZS fic without knowing anything about the show/books, whether I would go ride or die for the fated main pairing with decades of pining, or a poly trio featuring a sadistic mass murderer and the two people he tortured the most, well... you can guess what I would have answered. But within a week after finishing CQL, I blithely ignored all the WWX/LWJ fic recs people had lovingly curated for me and instead read every single Yi City trio I could possibly find.

While there are many, MANY righteous sandwich fics near and dear to my heart, the one I keep coming back to is If Living Can Be This by @veliseraptor. She took those glimpses at what Xue Yang could have been and shifted the story just a little to the left and looked at how the Yi City arc could have gone in a very, very different direction, and all without "redeeming" Xue Yang or ignoring how dangerous he was and still is.

So when I got wind that @misanthropiczombie had requested it for this year's Renegade Exchange, I engineered my way into being her giftee (ie, begged the mods).

This is a chonker of a series; while the main story is around 74k words, with the sequels it was about 180k, which translated to 572 pages! Originally I was going to do a typical rounded andbacked cased-in binding, but then a fellow Renegadee mentioned springback designs, which have a "spring" mechanism that forces the book to lay very flat when open. For such a big book that is unlikely to be read while lying down in bed (I mean, do what you want but I am not responsible for broken noses), this seemed like a GREAT time to learn an entirely new binding technique in less than a month. :D But as you can see, it lays VERY flat.

This is also the most complex cover design I've done so far - I used a vine motif for the typeset and wanted to emulate that in the cover, so after consulting with @celestial-sphere-press on her river bind cover, I cut out pieces of cover board for a moderately difficult onlay design.

I went with black and gold as the overall theme and also did some suminagashi for the edges to match the marbled endpapers and because It's What Xue Yang Deserves. At the same time, the book cloth is very nubby and textured to reflect the austere life they're living in Yi City at that point.

Because there clearly wasn't enough gold in this book, I added a fibrous gold flysheet to partly obscure the title page.

In one of the additional stories, Song Lan compares Xue Yang to a strangling vine that is aware that it could be ripped out at any moment. I used that as inspiration for the title and chapter ornaments. The text dividers are Jiangzai's hilt from CQL.

While the springback design was looooong, I did enjoy making it and may even do it again for mine and/or the author's copy! Or maybe I will cop out and just do rounded and backed cased in, we shall see. :D

Many, many thanks to the Renegade crew for supporting me during this bind. This one truly took a village and I would not have been able to do it without them!

[firebound-press]

Binding of the Dismantle series by and for the spectacular @kai-ni!

A binding to match a soft story about a bright future. LED fabric embedded into the cover. Bound in white leather to match an overcoat featured in the work. Sharp metal corners and splattered blue endpapers. All based on motifs in the story.

[firebound-press]

fanbinding: try/cry/why? (just a dream)

the story: try/cry/why? (just a dream) is a Captain Swan 2b divergence written for the 2022 Writers Month Challenge and finished in December 2022.

the art: cover art comissioned from the incredible @svenjaliv, giclee print on canvas, sealed with a gloss finish fixatif. lettering done by me using font dubbletrubble. intersitial art from istock.

materials: linceco bookcloth for sewn boards binding. printed on the bookbinder's special from church paper. endpapers from madeline's paste paper (etsy). spine emrboidered using a rosebud stitch, wrapped with a portugese stitch, in variegated DMC embroidery floss.

since the story was a series of prompts i wanted to stay true to that feeling of running, inescapable thoughts and i kept it all as a one-shot, punctuated by the single-word prompts and accompanying art.

promise | chance | gold | melody / heart | castle | popular |  heat / echo / kiss | swim | leak | knot | wild | comfort | shadows | ice | bridge | bubble | jealous | pain | horror |  dream  | bow |  lips | scream | silk | sugar | loud | bond | rainbow (part one) | rainbow (part two)

find the complete story on AO3.

[firebound-press]

zinetober day 12....

[firebound-press]

Wildflower by sailingthenightsea

I think this is the first time by experiments have gotten the better of me in very big ways.

But I digress.

This bind - Wildflower by sailingthenightsea - is one that I had wanted to do for a long while. Back during the pandemic days, this fic helped me to uncover the diversity that is the Sleepy Bois Inc. fandom. So when it was finally time for me to begin work, I wanted to honor the fic's themes by going on a different bookbinding path.

First off, I had long wanted to make a cover window, and I feel this fic is a good opportunity to try this technique - a green cover to convey the green woods, and red to represent Tommy and the fae. I printed a marbled paper design, sealed it with varnish, cut-out two pieces of board, and pasted the paper on one board surface before layering it with the cut window-board.

That process was surprisingly easy. What wasn't was how I realize I had to paste and 'tuck-in' the green cover so that it doesn't cover the marbled design underneath. it took a lot of time, patience, and energy to finesse it all into a result that looks satisfactory.

Secondly, I wanted to see if I make the beginning (and final) pages of the textblock as endpapers into themselves. Conceptually, it would save time, materials, and energy. Unfortunately, I also tried another experiment of using misprinted pages to line the spine of the book. The result: see-through words and comments through the thin paper! Whoops!

I also wanted to use the concept of "dividing" sections of the book via endpapers such as my Solidaritek bind. But in this book, the endpapers would be printed onto the pages and divide sections of the book. The results look nice and is visually striking, but I hazard to be careful with this method and use it sparingly, as this can use up a lot more printer ink than one might expect.

I made some ground rules for typesetting: every major event in the story is punctuated by a number, along with a flourishing drop cap in Harrington font in dark red as the opening alphabet. And as is my style, I also incorporated a comments section where selected comments that clarify some story parts or explore the deeper themes of the fic are archived.

But my favorite part is the final paragraphs. Shout-out to @therealwaffleking for making a gorgeous rendition of the final parts of the fic, and one that I had to include! It was a simple matter of putting one (or two) paragraph per art, and the result feels like a storybook!

Initially, I wasn't happy with the result of this - there are places where the green cover isn't 'tucked-in' enough, I used too much ink to print those endpaper-pages, my use of misprints as a spine connector backfired on me, the black spine piece wasn't cut straight and thus had dinks, and there's even a tear on the top of the front spine!

But after a day of rest and introspection, I found myself warming to the bind, warts and all. Sure, it's far from perfect, but it's a bind that has character and quirkyness. It has more history in it's production than a normal ficbind, and I have learned a couple of new things about knowing what not to do in the future!. It's certainly a head-turner!

My heartfelt thanks to @sailingthenightsea for this fic, along with @100-reasons-sbi and @therealwaffleking for contributing their art! Thank you all so much!

[firebound-press]

Penciled Lines by BecausePlot

Fun fact: I intended for this to be completed at around the same time as my r/place Reddit bind.

But stuff got in the way and this somehow got delayed by over a week. A 16-page booklet.

Ironic, isn't it?

So along the way of doing my r/place Reddit bind, I stumbled upon a small fic that provided a good distraction - good enough to bind, in fact. But I also discovered another fic that piqued my interest, one concerning a minecraft server called the QSMP.

I have known of the server and followed the events there, but from a distance; between Hermitcraft, Decked Out, Rancher Duo, and my love for SBI, I didn't have enough time to get as deeply invested into lore as before. With that said, my love for Philza has made me very much aware of his QSMP shenanigans and I wanted to find out if there are good fics about him and his government-assigned partner, Missa.

And lo and behold, I found one!

As said before, this booklet is 16 pages. The main cover is just 2 paper layers (one layer of black cardstock and another of black color paper) on one another. The main font is Liberation Serif, with the title and drop cap in Handwriting Draft. As is my style, I added-in pictures at the opening and ending pages to set the theme and mood of the story.

All in all, despite the delay I find this bind to be a refreshing work after the laborious effort of the previous Reddit book.

Thanks to @becauseplot for writing this fic!

[firebound-press]

an artist i follow got an ask about whether it was alright to use their art as covers for fanfic bookbinding and i'm. sorry i must have missed this discourse but since when are people outright printing out other people's work and binding them into books? do you contact and get author's permission (sure as fuck hope so)? and how do we writers feel about that, because i certainly feel very uncomfortable with that idea. i mean not to spoil the artistic expression of bookbinding because it's beautiful work that i most certainly could not do, but. you can access them stories any time you want on the websites where they were originally posted. why print them? again i mean i get the pleasure of holding & reading physical books, i much prefer that too, but like. get some books i guess? sorry i come from a place of honesty and tbh surprise and confusion about this whole thing. someone tell me how we're feeling about this. someone explain to me why it's being done. i just wanna understand

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