firebound-press

[firebound-press]

do you do commissions for book binding? i came across one of your bindings and fell in love with it

I do not, but I’m more than happy to sit down with you and teach you how to do it yourself!! Shoot me a dm and I can help you out!

I promise that it’s not nearly as difficult as it may seem at first, and you can do it with materials you most likely have lying around the house! It’s also just a really rewarding hobby that makes for a really good conversation starter with people :D

[firebound-press]

Hi!! Dont mind me im just gonna lurk around and see all the bookbinding advice :)

Is this who I think it is? 👀👀 is it perhaps a certain commenter of ours perhaps maybe?

If not then you can ignore that and I’m very very happy to have you here!!!!! Feel free to ask questions I am more than happy to answer them!!

[firebound-press]

hi you've literally never crossed my dash till today but a friend of mine reblogged one of your posts and i'm gonna just. go through your blog and look at all the awesome bookbinding advice kay cool thank you byeeeeee

Hehe go for it!! Have fun!!! Explore the cool books!!!!!! Yipppe!!!!!!!!!!

[firebound-press]

your half of the ransom by definitelynotshouting

After the massive chonker of my last bind, I wanted to do something simpler and less complicated. And there was one fic that is in my to-bind list that is both short and sweet to typeset: your half of the ransom by @definitelynotshouting.

Buuuut trust me to not do some experimenting, even now.

Also, apologies for the terrible lighting. And for adding glue to the spine which resulted in the ripping at the gutter for the title page. Oops.

As a fan of the Life SMP Series, I always wanted to bind something from Secret Life but kept it off due to other projects coming to the forefront. Well, that list is cleared! Time to do justice to the marooned GoodTimesWithScar and his empty sunflower fields!

I have done many a sewn-boards binding, but I wanted to experiment to see if I can make one for a single signature / booklet. If this is successful, I can use this to bind and embellish really short fanfics and even zines into proper books, with endpapers and hardcovers and even a nice spine!

Not only did my experiment turn out well, It has made me want to search for more short fics to turn into proper hardcovers!

I also tried another experiment with applying fanart and prints. I have pasted artworks onto book pages before, and they always end up either warping or waving from glue moisture. So this time, I only dabbed glue onto the top edges of these images and pasted them onto the beginning and last pages of the fic proper.

Verdict: they don't warp and are freely flexible, no stress onto the pages or spine! (yay!) But their bottom free-wheeling corners like to wedge themselves against the opposite pages next to the gutters, making them a danger for creasing and wear (nay!)

Special thanks to @definitelynotshouting for writing this fic and to @l3o-draws for her permission for me to use her beautiful Secret Life Scar fanart for this fic! You both are amazing!

[firebound-press]

Hi! There’s also lots of communities for fanbinding online! Like renegade bindery, a big group of bookbinders that are MORE than happy to help out :D

IT'S DONE. MY BOOKBOUND PHYSICAL HGCZ GOLDEN ERA. if you have read hgcz read it NOW. literally right now you can find it at @hotguycomiczine it will change your life

i've been working on this since january (mostly due to the budgeting issues involving printing), and i believe have just narrowly completed this in a shorter timeframe than the actual zine (sheer embarrassment for taking so long was a great motivation). and YES i found out there was an official physical edition in production about 90% of the way through

i did draw a new cover and design a book jacket for golden era! i've never done something like that before so it was a great challenge

genuinely, hgcz might be one of the greatest pieces of art to ever come out of a fandom. i absolutely loved like. everything about the overarching story and all the details that went into this i could ramble on for hours. i have so sososo much more respect for everyone who worked on this now that i tried creating smth adjacent. this whole project, especially as a fandom related collaborative effort, is just incredible to me

bonus content under the cut!

hgcz cover notes:

there's a lot of stuff i tried to put into the golden era cover

i really liked the original wormtime cover, so the colors are very inspired by that

photograph meant to show the duo at the beginning of Golden Era, for the contrast with isjasz's polaroid by Legacy

hg is angling the camera to catch himself first and foremost, cg being in there is almost an afterthought. he's still a prideful guy!

speaking of which, they're angled away from each other as they're still not fully working together as a team

cuteguy and hotguy designs a mashup of several creators (particularly tibby-art for cuteguy and chrisrin for hotguy)

cg's eyes are visible but hg's visor hides his

hg's scars are also slightly visible as reflections, including a harsh reflection across his left eye. hmmm..

my hotguy and cuteguy refs for the cover. you can see which other artists from hgcz i took inspiration from i think

i had. so many issues. with the physical pages. sometimes my spacing would be off and some parts of the comic would get cut off and i'd have to go buy them again (i don't have a color printer). and i couldn't afford to buy all 172 pages at once so i split the trips up biweekly. anyway it was just a whole process. i ended up with so many offprints i had enough to bookbind an extra hgcz scraps book.

also where i did sketches and thumbnailing

some pics of the book in progress

[firebound-press]

IT'S DONE. MY BOOKBOUND PHYSICAL HGCZ GOLDEN ERA. if you have read hgcz read it NOW. literally right now you can find it at @hotguycomiczine it will change your life

i've been working on this since january (mostly due to the budgeting issues involving printing), and i believe have just narrowly completed this in a shorter timeframe than the actual zine (sheer embarrassment for taking so long was a great motivation). and YES i found out there was an official physical edition in production about 90% of the way through

i did draw a new cover and design a book jacket for golden era! i've never done something like that before so it was a great challenge

genuinely, hgcz might be one of the greatest pieces of art to ever come out of a fandom. i absolutely loved like. everything about the overarching story and all the details that went into this i could ramble on for hours. i have so sososo much more respect for everyone who worked on this now that i tried creating smth adjacent. this whole project, especially as a fandom related collaborative effort, is just incredible to me

bonus content under the cut!

hgcz cover notes:

there's a lot of stuff i tried to put into the golden era cover

i really liked the original wormtime cover, so the colors are very inspired by that

photograph meant to show the duo at the beginning of Golden Era, for the contrast with isjasz's polaroid by Legacy

hg is angling the camera to catch himself first and foremost, cg being in there is almost an afterthought. he's still a prideful guy!

speaking of which, they're angled away from each other as they're still not fully working together as a team

cuteguy and hotguy designs a mashup of several creators (particularly tibby-art for cuteguy and chrisrin for hotguy)

cg's eyes are visible but hg's visor hides hishg's scars are also slightly visible as reflections, including a harsh reflection across his left eye. hmmm..

my hotguy and cuteguy refs for the cover. you can see which other artists from hgcz i took inspiration from i think

i had. so many issues. with the physical pages. sometimes my spacing would be off and some parts of the comic would get cut off and i'd have to go buy them again (i don't have a color printer). and i couldn't afford to buy all 172 pages at once so i split the trips up biweekly. anyway it was just a whole process. i ended up with so many offprints i had enough to bookbind an extra hgcz scraps book.

also where i did sketches and thumbnailing

some pics of the book in progress

[firebound-press]

Fanbinding(ish): Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

(More photos below the cut, and I'll add the rest in another reblog.)

I had the idea for this four years ago. I actively started on the typeset about two years ago. I finished the typeset in about two weeks before the NG news broke--in fact I'd sent him an ask on tumblr just before he left, asking him if there's an explanation for Good Omens's inconsistent dropcaps. Maybe I'll ask the publisher.

Anyway! I almost didn't keep going, but I'd already put an insane amount of hours into the typeset, and also, fuck it. So I did it mostly for me, but also for Terry Pratchett, and also for the vine.

For those who aren't familiar, a red-letter Bible is one where everything Jesus says is in red. I thought it would be funny to do one where everything the antichrist says is in red--and then I also thought it would be funny to do pull-out quotes like my Catholic Youth Bible had, and then I thought, why stop there, and that's when things started to get weird. Trying to get the text to line up coherently around the trees and the mountains especially was delicate--and of course if I changed something on the page before it would throw everything out of whack.

The cover was inspired by those giant Bibles with covers that are an inch thick with a cross or something like that debossed in the middle. The text wasn't long enough to make it that thick, but it's two layers of thin board glued together. Leather on top, and then I used a foil quill to do most of the design--anything that's a circle is a brass stamp.

I make the design on Illustrator, and then had the cricut trace it onto the foil with a sharpie. I found that a lot more effective than printing it out and trying to do the foil quill through the paper stencil. I'll let you try and guess what shape I used instead of a cross, and will put the answer under the cut.

Doing gold page edges was a bitch and a half; I sanded off attempts about a dozen times. Fake gold was a bust; so was heat activated foil. I ended up doing one layer of acrylic paint and about five layers of gold acrylic.

And because I got this a lot about My Immortal: no, I'm not going to share the typeset. Even before Everything, I feel fine justifying this because I own the paperback, the deluxe edition hardback, the DVD, the script book, and the coffee table book. But I'm not actually into book piracy. (Unless you are the Terry Pratchett estate, in which case, sharing is caring.)

I'll do another reblog with the rest of the interior images.

(And for those who were looking for it: the cover is, of course, the dread symbol Odegra/the M25 motorway.)

[firebound-press]

An In Stars and Time themed sketchbook for an art trade!

Used Strathmore marker paper for the textblock, per their request! Marbled paper for the inset marbled by dear @ziezie13 at renegade retreat a few years ago <3

[firebound-press]

as ive been trying to learn just basic typesetting, im soooo in awe of how beautiful the riptides one is. any tips to get started with "pretty" typesetting? (ive been working to learn how to work with LyX, an offshoot of LaTeX, but im so down to learn new software tbh)

Hmmmm. Honestly? Just jump straight into it. Fuck around and find out! If you don't think something looks good, go to other people and ask for their opinion and advice. I know that I personally send ten wip screenshots to the typesetting channel in the Renegade Bindery server when I'm working on a typesetting, and I've found that the people there are able to help a ton. Don't be afraid of critique, critique is what helps you grow as an artist. (if you want to reach out I am always happy to help critique)

Second piece of advice is to genuinely just do whatever the fuck feels fun to you. My second ever typeset was a pretty elaborate typeset of Passerine, and while looking back on it I can see that there's a lot that could be improved on, it helped me experiment with different styles and pushed the boundaries of what I was comfortable with! if you have an idea that you feel is outside of your skill set, follow it!! Try new things!!!! Even if it turns out bad you still made something awesome, and the experience helps you learn!!

As for softwares and programs, the noun project is a good place to find vectors and svg files. I also know a lot of people use a lot of different programs, but I personally use indesign just because i have access to it. But LaTeX is a very good program from what I've heard from other people! Here is a list of other typesetting software that are used, provided by the Renegade Server!

Feel free to reach out if you have any more questions :DD

[firebound-press]

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO MAKE THE RIPTIDE BINDING???

SO LONG. SOOOO LONG. I STARTED IT LAST FEBRUARY AND ONLY JUST FINISHED IT

to be fair a lot of this has to do with my own executive disfunction getting in the way of it and I very much could have finished it last summer, but I had. A LOT of stuff happen to me that summer that I had to make a priority.

This is very much an outlier I should say. Normally it only takes me like. A month to make a book (sometimes less) but yeah. It took. A while

[firebound-press]

How did you do the thing on the binding where the colors are alternating? Like the stripey ribbon thing?

They’re called endbands!! Normally I do a front bead style, but this time I decided to go with a double core endband since it gives me more control over the pattern and colors :DD

[firebound-press]

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO I PROUDLY PRESENT!!!!!! A FULL COLLECTION OF FISH N CHIP WORKS BY @earlgay-milktea !!!!!!!

My first ever leatherbound book!!!! Over 650 pages!!!!! My first time doing double core endbands!!!!! It’s all in here!!!!!!!!

It’s got custom graphics by @fishcop !!!! It’s got a couple graphics from me!!!!!! We’ve got it all!!!!!!

Ive been working on this book for over a year now and I’m so so proud to finally have it done. There’s a lot of stuff I could say about this bind but it mostly boils down to “holy shit I actually did it that’s so cool”

A lot of love and work went into this bind so if you have any questions please don’t be afraid to ask! Please!! I want to talk about it!!!!

Works featured:

Heart of the Sea

Breaking Free

Honesty Is The Best Fallacy

Captive Hero

Lovefool

Bitter Water

advancing on real ground

Wreck the Halls

Before Daybreak

You can also read Earls other work here:

https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgay_milktea

[firebound-press]

No no, thank you for creating such a wonderful story!! And for letting me bind it!!

Also these pictures are so so good thank you for sharing them!!!!!

Todays book is Natural Satellite by @sixpossumsinatrenchcoat!!

I’ll be so real, I’m so proud of this book. I had the chance to take a book arts class for school, and for my final project I decided to go ahead and do a fic binding. This book is one I’d had planned out for a while, and this was my chance to actually create it!!

You can’t see it super well in these pictures, but the edges of the book are painted! And they have stars! So you’ll just have to trust me when I say it looks really really cool.

Honestly this fic is very important to me just in general. When I was first playing ISAT I was told several times completely separate people that I desperately needed to read Natural Satellite as soon as I finished the game, and they were very much correct!

For the typesetting I really wanted to try and capture the energy of the game itself, which I think I was able to do pretty well!

The title page is based on the orbital path of tsuchinshan-atlas, aka the second moon that we had for a few months last year. It felt very fitting for the contents of the fic hehe!

You can read the fic here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53412649/chapters/135189547

[firebound-press]

Todays book is Natural Satellite by @sixpossumsinatrenchcoat!!

I’ll be so real, I’m so proud of this book. I had the chance to take a book arts class for school, and for my final project I decided to go ahead and do a fic binding. This book is one I’d had planned out for a while, and this was my chance to actually create it!!

You can’t see it super well in these pictures, but the edges of the book are painted! And they have stars! So you’ll just have to trust me when I say it looks really really cool.

Honestly this fic is very important to me just in general. When I was first playing ISAT I was told several times completely separate people that I desperately needed to read Natural Satellite as soon as I finished the game, and they were very much correct!

For the typesetting I really wanted to try and capture the energy of the game itself, which I think I was able to do pretty well!

The title page is based on the orbital path of tsuchinshan-atlas, aka the second moon that we had for a few months last year. It felt very fitting for the contents of the fic hehe!

You can read the fic here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53412649/chapters/135189547

[firebound-press]

The Art of War: Technoblade Edition

Being a longtime Techno fan(since like early 2019? Hypixel Skyblock my beloathed), of course I had to make a copy of The Art of War. Also, it was a good excuse to finally read it, but just a regular copy wasn't enough. Of course not. The Art of War, by Sun Tzu: The Technoblade Edition! (Shoutout to MIT for having the translation for free online. And Lionel Giles I guess for actually translating it all those years ago).

This copy marks every single instance he quotes The Art of War in The Potato War series, plus a couple other few choice quotes at the start of some chapters(with a couple other easter eggs!) I then designed the cover to look like an enchanted book, because my little headcannon is that it's his copy he carries around in game. It is specifically an enchanted book because normal books don't have the belt (boring).

The ender chest was a gift from a dear friend of mine many years ago. I got so excited about finishing this bind that I instantly ran off to do a photo shoot with it :)

Progress pics and rambling, a per usual:

Really trying not to enter this hobby wallet first so this bind was a total fuck around and find out process:

My printer decided it didn't wanna print double side it and grabbed two pieces of paper, so originally I was gonna just reprint that page, but then I found a header error AND all the em-dashes mysteriously missing, except only in the body text?? Anyways when I reprinted it was fine and I had the correct off white/cream paper by then. End papers aren't super visible, but they're handmade recycled purple paper :)

Used graph paper as the stencil...don't do that. It was way too thin and the paint seeped under. I also didn't have silver paint. Make a proper stencil, guys. It's worth it.

Yolo-ed the cloth and glue for every single cover up 'til now, but this was the one that failed (third pic) and I ended up redoing the cloth from scratch, this time with acrylic medium/cornstarch paste filled cloth.

Tbh I'm not sure if I ordered brass or gold clasps?? Not that it matters?? But trying to find clasps big enough without getting 100 of them was rough. That is all.

But we did it! And now I have to go make another for a friend who saw it and instantly asked for one. The laser printer wasn't exactly cooperative but fuck it we ball.

Blood for the blood god. Technoblade never dies.

[firebound-press]

I feel like I did more for binderary today than at any one point of Feb 😅

I was in the zone yesterday and today tho, burned thru sewing, gluing, trimming, sanding, painting edges and making the cases! Tomorrow I’m going to get all the htv cut and weeded (which is sooo tedious). And then it’ll be time to case in, possibly mailing them out this week 🤞

[firebound-press]

people on TikTok don’t realize fic binding didn’t begin with idiots selling mass printed fanfiction on TikTok-Shop. They think it started as a negative thing ON TIKTOK😭it started on tumblr years ago as a way to appreciate authors!! It was never about selling fics, we’re AGAINST THAT HERE and always have been. I am so tired of the way TikTok rewrites fandom culture.