geminibookbinding

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Two books done! I bought an online version of a cookbook and the publisher’s site was ass for reading it on so naturally I had to make a physical copy. Got to use book cloth made from some stuff I found at Joann’s (rip). Used maleeka_mols_creates’ end band tutorial over on Instagram and I LOVE how it turned out!

Also did another rebind in the Percy Jackson series with The Sea of Monsters and one day I’ll complete the entire series

(Completed: 2/20/2025)

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Hoo okay it has been a Hot Minute since I made anything. Like. Since October. Long story short, there was a lot of Changes™️ in the home and redoing areas (read: I didn’t have an art space for about twoooo and a half months?) but!

New work area! New projects!

Head empty no thoughts made a book to see what details I’d forgotten of this craft! (Spoilers, a lot).

Tried to do foiled edges and realized I no longer have a sander and my noodle arms aren’t built for sanding by hand! (If you half ass attempt something, you get half assed results)

Got some of the cleanest looking endbands ever!

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Birthday gift journal! Because it’ll be a Junk Journal I included a tie to help keep it closed (the last one got a bag full of confetti from a concert added to it). When I sent samples of potential covers she had a hard time choosing so I combined two of them and tried to stick with a space/stars theme 💖

(Completed: 11/4/2024)

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I used a color printer for the whole thing, but saved the book as a pdf and used an imposer (@/renegadeguild’s resources tab -> resource document -> imposer ) which puts together the pages into signatures in order for me and saves each signature as individual pdfs, and then when printing I’d change between black and white and color when printing a new signature. If I really wanted to get nitpicky about what is printed bw vs color, I could do individual pages this way too

Not sure how familiar you are with the imposer, or if it’s something you would want to use, so feel free to ignore! But what I do by picture is: 1. Upload pdf of text 2. Make sure paper size is what I want 3. Adjust how many sheets of paper will make up each signature - I usually stay around 7-9 and finally 4. Generate

I’ve been slowly working on this one since about July, but We Didn’t Start The Fire by @ohhgingersnaps has been on my To Be Bound list ever since I first read it. It blends Stardew Valley and superhero life wonderfully and has been one of my go-tos for rereading.

With a majority Fall Out Boy song titles/lyrics as chapter titles, I tried to emulate the font from The Phoenix as a nod to them as well as our leading hero in the story.

From formatting newspaper articles to text messages to cut-out-newspaper-definitely-not-threats-messages, I had a blast with this, but I think the highlight for me personally was including two of @inktr0vert ‘s sketches of Ava and Sebastian (thank you for letting me use them!)

(Completed: 10/23/2024)

Also shout out to my friend for helping me when I couldn’t get the We Didn’t Start the Fire clip to format properly and needed a screen shot of it, as a fellow FOB fan she definitely called me out on that 😂

[geminibookbinding]

I’ve been slowly working on this one since about July, but We Didn’t Start The Fire by @ohhgingersnaps has been on my To Be Bound list ever since I first read it. It blends Stardew Valley and superhero life wonderfully and has been one of my go-tos for rereading.

With a majority Fall Out Boy song titles/lyrics as chapter titles, I tried to emulate the font from The Phoenix as a nod to them as well as our leading hero in the story.

From formatting newspaper articles to text messages to cut-out-newspaper-definitely-not-threats-messages, I had a blast with this, but I think the highlight for me personally was including two of @inktr0vert ‘s sketches of Ava and Sebastian (thank you for letting me use them!)

(Completed: 10/23/2024)

Also shout out to my friend for helping me when I couldn’t get the We Didn’t Start the Fire clip to format properly and needed a screen shot of it, as a fellow FOB fan she definitely called me out on that 😂

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The book that finally made me buy a guillotine!

Inspired by my grandmother-in-law who is a talented artist, I visited her this weekend and asked her if she could show me how she makes her envelopes she sends cards in (examples she sent home with me):

Which involves sewing smaller paper onto Big paper and then sewing it closed for envelope

And the whole drive back I kept thinking ‘I bet I could make a book like this’

So I did

Inside is just a blank notebook as I wanted the cover to be the focus (and not mess up a text block with horrible trimming). I stitched the bookcloth the a 11x8.5 piece of cardstock after measuring spine width, and then took scraps of paper and stitched them on. At the end I went around the edge and stitched everything one final time (I don’t think it was necessary, but something we did for the envelopes). I didn’t do any planning so I eyeballed how much cover I’d need and was short just a smidge at the top and bottom.

(Completed: 10/8/2024)

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I bought a guillotine

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my flawless bind is done!!! 🥹

this is my second ever hardcover, first ever faux leather, first ever metal corners, and first bind of my own fic!

featuring art by myself and @chernozemm , and a hand painted cover because i couldn’t figure out any other way to decorate it lmaoooo. now i just gotta do this three more times for mine, meg, and zemm’s copies 🤞

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Renegade Loves Fic (Writers) Stats 2024

Fanfiction Writers Appreciation Day or FFWAD (August 21st) is an annual appreciation of fanfiction writers and the gifts that they give to fandom. To show our appreciation, we ran a binding event where binders on our Renegade Discord server chose a fic to make a physical copy of. This was all to say thank you to the author for the work that they put into making it.

Here’s onto the stats for this year’s event!

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These itsy-bitsy A7 books are three copies of white queen, red heart and snow white, blood red by @ofgeography

One copy was for me, one was send as a gift to the author, and one is for Goose @imaginariumpress who is generously helping me with actually delivering author’s copies for Fanfiction Writer’s Appreciation Day this year.

🩸 The color scheme was right there in the prompt, so here are the bloody tiny books.

🩸 The covers are white cotton hand dyed/painted with red ink; the same ink was used to paint the edges (I wanted at least some bleed, and ink does that);

🩸 Title pages feature the dark forest and the dwarf caverns;

🩸 The fancy drop caps and the page numbers are bleeding. I really love this effect for vampire stories, it’s so extra!

🩸 But probably not as extra as typesetting the entire book in blackletter, but it felt appropriate for the dark fairy tale vibe the stories got going on.

I had a lot of fun with this project, and I really recommend checking out the stories if you somehow haven’t already!

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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!

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The Courtship Ritual of the Hercules Beetle by kittebasu

Tooru is pretty sure he could manage the mating habits of a mosquito. It’s the mating habits of people he can’t seem to get right.

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

y'all, this is sort of surreal for me. the first book i ever made, back in 2021, was this fic!!! it was my initiation book!! since then i have learned so much, made so many books, and MET so many people it feels like a different lifetime.

i am so, so happy that i was able to redesign and bind a NEW AND IMPROVED version 2 and GIFT IT to the author!!! it has all come full circle; this has been my absolute favorite fic for years and years, and my little caterpillar self which could barely cut board and freehand painted a scuffed little beetle on the cover has emerged from the cocoon of LEARNING SKILLS and can now sew endbands, paint edges, make cutouts?!?!! still can't measure right though-

kittebasu, thank you so much for writing this fic. i've read and reread it so many times, i really hope you like my bind of it.

process post here.

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Happy Fanfiction Writers Appreciation Day!

So this year I participated in FFWAD thanks to @renegadeguild ...

I'm not quite skilled nor talented enough for physical book binding unfortunately, but I did make a typeset for a talented Baldur's Gate 3 author whose story I love! <insert drum roll, drops curtain>

Arachnophillia Anonymous by @greyias is one of my favorites! It's a hilarious story taking place after *that* spider licking scene, featuring my favorite nerdy wizard, Gale, and his attempts at a romantic gesture. The rest of the companions appear offscreen (or, specifically, outside the tent), and they are just as funny and refreshing. Definitely recommend any BG3 fans read this, regardless if you're a Gale shipper or not; the humor is just peak perfection.

Thank you to the author for letting me make a little something featuring their fic! And thank you to Renegade Bindery for hosting!

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Bound: The Twenty-Two Cards Series (Rookie Moves + 6 more) by peu_a_peu

I am pretty insane about this fic right now. Between this bind and the podfic I'm making of it, I am happily living in the world of these two dumb cops.

I made this for the @renegadeguild's Renegade Loves Fic(writers) event for Fanfiction Writer's Appreciation Day (which is today!), and sent it to the author earlier this month.

This bind has a couple of firsts:

First hand-sewn endbands

I am very very proud of the endbands - it has taken me many, many, many attempts to get them right. Huge props to maleeka_mols for this fantastic tutorial!

First dust jacket

I made a dust jacket because I felt like the design of the case didn't do this series justice. It just needed MORE.

Making it was fun but also very stressful. I had one chance to get the printing right (since I don't have a large format printer and so I had to get it printed as a poster, which is pricey) and thank god it all worked out perfectly.

So let's talk about the details…(other than the end bands and dust jacket.)

The 22 cards of the title reference the 22 cards of the major arcana. I am not familiar with the tarot, so I hope I didn't do anything "wrong" by choosing cards to use based on aesthetics. But it is such a fun aesthetic to use!

Weeding the HTV on the front was a lot. And then the gold of the title got a little wonky (another reason for the dust jacket, if I'm being honest) but I love the way it looks.

There's a lot of gold foiling on the inside. Each story has its own tarot card (again, chosen based on looks because I am shallow). I also made a table of contents! Just a lot of stuff. The typeset itself is fairly simple. (Would I love to have made a maximalist version like the one @slbindery made for me? Yes, but I have to accept that that is not the style I excel at.)

HAPPY (FAN) FIC WRITERS APPRECIATION DAY!

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Fanbinding of New Paradigm - FFWAD 2024!

New Paradigm by TempestTeapot

Fandom: Transformers - Generation One Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Archive Warnings:  No Archive Warnings Apply Category: Gen/Multi Words: 70,616

For the 2023 Renegade Typeset exchange @moonlight1314 gifted me the first story of the New Paradigm series back in December. It is lovely and colorful and includes the author's artwork as well!

However, I have immense fondness for the entire series and wanted all of it in one place. So I typeset the rest of the series and began plotting my first tête-bêche book.

My whole design was sparked from these amazing papers I used for the endpapers. I wanted to reflect on rolly-poly baby robots, and circles/star-bursts are a good way to do that.

From there I was able to find a lovely green fabric with dots and spirals to make bookcloth for the cover. These are my first covers with cutouts. Definitely a lot of work, but I like the effect. Something new in my skillset!

The tête-bêche style allows each typeset to shine on it's own, as each separate typeset still gets to start the book.

I wanted something with the feel of circuity on the cover, and also wanted to bring back the circles and indicate which of the covers to start with. This is my second cover using HTV: it turned out very well, but I am still learning a lot with every attempt!

This was also my first attempt at renaissance chevron endbands, which I like a lot! There was still the irritating task of securing the core to the text block, but that's done up front and then it's just sewing from then on. I really like the look, and maybe next time I'll be brave and choose more high-contrast colors to show of the pattern more.

Thank you @wearmanyhats for this delightful story! I'm so glad you are enjoying this fanart!

Mission Complete: Fan Fiction Writer Appreciated!

For those interested, I’ve also included this fanbinding in the Renegade Publishing Fanbindings collection, located here.

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Another year, another Fanfiction Writers Appreciation Day!!!! If you are a writer of fanfic, please know just how appreciated you are!! Fandom would be such a different space without your creativity and labors of love. 💜

Holidays are all about making traditions, and the bookbinding friends with @renegadeguild once again came together to bind copies of fics for their authors as a show of our appreciation. This year I had the absolute joy of binding Emergency Help Wanted by the wonderful @piyo-13 and even got to collaborate with her on some of the design elements! It's a Modern AU Jiang Cheng/Lan Xichen fic that starts with a "help wanted" ad.

EMERGENCY HELP WANTED

I lied when I got my job. I told them I had a kid so I could leave early from work to pick him up from daycare, take him to doctor's appointments, and occasionally miss a day when he's sick. Long story short, I'm in too deep. I didn't think it through. Looking to rent a kid for bring your child to work day. Must be a boy ages four to six, longish dark hair, likes soccer. Must also be artistic as the macaroni noodle paintings I made seem a little advanced for his age. Also, I will pay extra for someone willing to play the role of husband when dropping him off. He's a prosecuting attorney who often brings his work home. Message me for further details. Serious inquiries only.

Ok. So. I may have gone a little feral with this one. Online "help wanted" ad spiraled into loading wheel scene dividers, spiraled into fake Google search result headers, spiraled into FULLY committing to those authentic looking text messages. In full color. (There are so many. I typeset in MS Word. It was SO worth it, but god what a struggle at some points.) And don't forget the "recent searches" title page! Or the computer cutout on the cover! (It's bluescreening, just like Lan Xichen through this entire fic!) Also that cover/title page image that I just kept adding details to. (It's supposed to be Lan Xichen's desk, so it simply didn't feel right until it had sticky notes on the computer, #1 dad on the mug, scissors and measuring tape, scribbles on the sticky notes) Did I have a ton of fun designing this one? Perhaps. Couldn't say. Maybe just a tad. (This is a lie I had an ABSOLUTE BLAST!)

Historically, I've waited until I finish at least the typeset before reaching out to the author, but not so with this one! I got the idea for the fake google search results from Piyo's authors notes, teasing the contents of the next chapter. But! Those didn't start until about chapter 4! So I reached out and asked if we could collaborate and I'm forever glad I did! Not only does this have teasers for each chapter, I also got to bounce design ideas off of her, including what shade of blue and purple for the text messages. Because my friends, that is a serious matter and changed SEVERAL times throughout the process.

Also shoutout to all my Renegade friends who gave input and encouragement over the past year while I worked on this (what endpages to use? how to make this shade of green perfectly Nie Huaisang? how do we feel about this text message design? or how about this one?) - I love you all dearly and appreciate you so much for putting up with my nonsense at all times.

Binding details below the cut!

Fandom: The Untamed/Mo Dao Zu Shi

Pairing: Jiang Cheng | Jiang Wanyin / Lan Huan | Lan Xichen

Bookcloth: Aqua/Purple Dubletta from Colophon Book Arts

Endpapers: Craft Consortium Ink Drops - Ocean pack

Textblock paper: short grain cream from Church Paper

Titling: We R Memory Keepers foil quill

Endbands: leather cording core, DMC embroidery floss for the bands

Body Font: EB Garamond

Title Font: Berlin Sans FB

Text Messages: Roboto

Additional fonts: Times New Roman, Kunstler Script, Magis Authentic

Title page image from Rawpixel and designed in Canva

Various computer graphics from The Noun Project

Tumblr insists on eating and doubling text in this section at its own whim, so if there's something missing that you're curious about, feel free to DM me an ask!

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The Golden Bird: Part 2

The Golden Bird: Part II by @pierrotwrites-hc

For (Fan) Fic Writer Appreciate Day (August 21st) I decided to bind The Golden Bird: Part 2, the second part of one of my absolute favorite fics EVER.

I tried to match the same style I did in my previous bind of Part 1 of the series, but still making it unique in itself.

The custom end papers were made from the painting Ganymede by Gabriel Ferrier with a book quote (one of multiple quotes i used in this bind as I couldn't pick just one since the prose in this story is so beautiful)

Foiled title pages because I love foil and have a lot :)

For the typeset itself, it is very similar to the one i did for part 1, except included some drop caps

Now for probably my favorite part of this bind - THE ART!

@thedaydreamingcynic has created some of the most beautiful art for the TGB and they were kind enough to let me include some of them in this bind.

The art was printed on transparent film and overlaid in the book with thin double-sided crafting tape.

Truly, all their art is stunning.

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.

Thank you @pierrotwrites-hc for creating such an amazing story <3

HAPPY (FAN) FIC WRITERS APPRECIATION DAY