jackalopeia - Tumblr blog

[jackalopeia]

have been making little books, this one is lined

this one is is a simple sketchbook

i've made both with criscross binding and waxed green thread :)

A little backstory:

I've started making sketchbooks with some old sketch paper I found and the backings of paper blocks for their hard covers. I've tried to learn a few stitching methods and I fell in love with coptic stitching and criscross binding.

I've now started to sell them in fairs that happen in my uni and it's been fun

for a life update: i've got a lovely girlfriend and a kitty now

[jackalopeia]

God I love how this came out. This is vol. 1 of Labyrinth: Coronation. I bought an owl tool just for this book. Bound in leather with hand made marbled endpapers. The labyrinths on each cover are sewn into the boards. That took a while. I just got all three volumes in so I'm going to do it again but with all three this time. Super excited!

[jackalopeia]

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!

[jackalopeia]

The book I've finished today is one I planned to do during June for pride month and then did not. But here it is, in all of its flawed glory. (My terrible edge trimming, the book board is not quite squared, and the back end sheet got rumpled after I pasted it down.)

Still, it turned out well, I think. And it taught me that yes, I very much need to invest in either a steel triangle or an L-square.

[jackalopeia]

The extra toes add bap damage.

[jackalopeia]

Newest rebind!

Once Upon A Broken Heart - Stephanie Garber

Finally getting around to posting the most laborious design I've undertaken yet. 10/10 would not recommend doing a lace background in vinyl if you don't enjoy neck pain. 🤣

But I was obsessed with the idea of doing lace and powered through. My vinyl wraps are getting more and more ambitious with every book. 😅

Also foil is a bitch to photograph haha

I had permission from @hawthornandvinebindery on IG to use aspects of her designs and make this one my own and I couldn't be more thankful to her. 😍

I also had a good few friends cheering me on and putting up with my color choice indecisions and constant grumbling about this design and I love them so much for bearing with me 🖤🖤

Materials:

Vinyl - gatichetta HTV in pale pink

Vinyl frog gold foil

Htvront black

Printable vinyl

Bookcloth-@bookcraftsupply in dusty rose

End pages- custom

[jackalopeia]

I saw this question posed on tiktok, but I think Tumblr would really enjoy it too.

If a fae creature offered to give one million dollars for a bone chosen at random, how many bones would you allow them to take?

Light clarifications; The fae is not the one choosing the bones. The bone is taken at random. Each bone, no matter the size or importance, is worth a full million dollars. You must also declare the exact number first, you can't go bone-by-bone. You either say 2 or you say 10, you can't work your way up to a higher number. The bones are removed instantaneously, and the money is given immediately as well. You will not get in government trouble for acquiring the money.

Tell me in the tags/replies how many bones you'd let the fae take. And as always, reblog for bigger sample size.

[jackalopeia]

🤍 When You Were Mine/When We Were Young duology by @sequinhaze 🤍

Typeset and handbound by me for personal use only. This fic can be read for free on ao3. Keep fanfic free ✌🏼

[jackalopeia]

Herman Melville's Moby Dick: or, The Whale. Custom binding designed by Susan Ebanks and bound by Chaim Ebanks of Exeter Bookbinders; white Chieftain Goatskin leather with blind tooling, gilt lettering, and glass prosthetic eye, 2023. [x]

Part of an upcoming exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum, "Draw Me Ishmael: The Book Arts of Moby Dick" opening on June 1, 2024.

[jackalopeia]

Book #25!

Fic: Apep Swallows the Moon

Fandom: Yugioh!

For: Me, the author!

A rebind of my very first bind - same fic, but updated with new skills, supplies, tools, typeset, and design sensibilities! This fic is about some horrible painful body transformations (weredragonism) and ritualistic axe killings in the woods at night, so I wanted the cover and the end-papers to reflect the bloody, uncanny, torn flesh feeling. I first cut a strip of the neon red slub and lay it across the (bradel bound) bookboards; once that was glued down, I tore up the scaly paper until I had the ideal shape for the cover. The end-papers are, of course, Crepaldi.

Typesetting details below the cut!

The fic also deals with ancient Egyptian myth and magic, so the typeset has ancient Egyptian elements, like a panel from the Book of the Dead where the gods kill the demon snake, Apep, that I used for the title spread. Apep is in the odd-page header of every chapter, but each chapter has a different hieroglyph in the even-page header, reflecting a key character from that chapter: the cat, the brother, and the Pharaoh.

BEHOLD! Demon snake!

[jackalopeia]

One-volume binding of Shimeji Simulation, one of my favorite mangas of all time. Folio size, Polar Duo, metallic silver HTV + case (with a little hole so you can see the girls being tender together 💙)

I made this one for a friend who mentioned that he'd be interested in reading the manga, but preferred to read manga in physical form. There's no licensed English translation OR print run of this, so I decided to make my own - I downloaded the Orchesc/a/ns translation/scan on MangaDex, compiled it all into a single volume, and reversed the PDF page order before imposing it into signature-form, so it can be read right-to-left, as intended! The edge art is hand-drawn by me, meant to mimic those geometric doodles that show up throughout the story. Hand-sewn headbands, to pull it together! And a little mushroom + fish charm bookmark, because OBVIOUSLY!

Fun fact: this is the first book I've ever bound that's been too chunky to fit in my home guillotine. It was nearly too big for my bookpress, too - but only nearly.

[jackalopeia]

IT IS FINISHEEDDDDD!!!

Fronds. Fronds, please understand that this book saved my life in 2022, and I am SO PROUD that the cover turned out EXACTLY how I wanted. It took me two tries (always check that your ink is permanent 🙃) but I love it so much.

If you have not read THE WATCHMAKER OF FILIGREE STREET by Natasha Pulley, and you like soft, historical love stories with hints of magic and clockwork octopi, I highly recommend.

[jackalopeia]

Wood Engraving Wednesday

Here are a few delightful wood engravings from a recent gift showing the various processes that go into binding a book. This little pamphlet is entitled A Short History of Bookbinding and a Glossary of Styles and Terms Used in Binding … .printed in London at the Chiswick Press for the bookbinder Joseph William Zaehnsdorf in 1895.These images were probably printed from metal plates that were made from the original wood engravings. The engravings are not attributed, as was the case for most commercial engravings.

Click or tap on the images to see the definitions for these activities as provided in the booklet’s glossary. 

View more posts with wood engravings!

[jackalopeia]

Did a tiny book bind along for Binderary this year and that was fun! (Shout out to @simply-sithel for hosting, I had a blast!)

So I decided to go even tinier with the leftover scraps and make earrings! (They were very fiddly, there was much swearing, but they are very cute and I love wearing them.) I think I used the flat plastic end of my glue brush more than the actual brush for applying glue to these...

Cover paper of all the tinies was marbled by me! The first tiny book was about 2" tall, and the earrings were all of 1/2".

[jackalopeia]

the palestinian coffee company donates 20% of profits to the palestinian children's relief fund

[jackalopeia]

I’m slowly getting better with iron on vinyl. This came out slightly crooked but I love it. Casing coming soon.

A Demon Lords Cry by Kagome Yuki Niwa

[jackalopeia]

Who wants to make a peller box?

Guess what! I finally gathered my pages of scribbled notes, my camera of haphazard in-progress pictures, and finally compiled a set of instructions for making one of these bad boys!

And not only that, but I've got two versions of this baby. I like mixing and matching my unit families because sometimes 1/32 inch sparks joy and sometimes 14 mm is just so convenient, but especially since all of my chipboard comes in english thicknesses, here's a version of the process for my fellow imperial units weirdos:

And here's one for the sensible folks of the world, raised on a base-ten system rather than dividing everything in half and then in half and then in half-- I won't subject you to inches, when there's a workaround, but I was tempted! Have your localized version of the story and have fun with it:

Mad credit of course goes to Hugo Peller, who developed these things in the first place, but also to Jack Fetterer, who preserved a set of notes from a 1990 class, which, as far as I can tell, are the most complete set of instructions available online. But I'm an engineer, I couldn't be satisfied there, I had bludgeon it into a system of equations, sorted by usage and material. And I also go into some of the hiccups I ran into trying to follow those class instructions, like being a green amateur at leatherwork, or not having the equipment to saw plywood boards in my apartment. These instructions still do make some unfair assumptions about the base knowledge level of anyone who wants to give this a try, like using bookcloth rather than plain cloth, but I may try to loop back and adjust that soon.

I can't claim any kind of expertise in this type of work, but I beat my head against an interesting problem, and it's time to share what I got out of it! And, secret goal, I want to help more people make more cool things, and maybe improve on my process in ways I can absorb and chew on in the future. Save my work, change it, I dare anyone who sees this to improve it!! I want it to be better. Credit would be cool, and of course the actual experts I leveraged for this deserve all the credit in the world, but that's not my priority. I want the world to have more exciting things in it, and I want more people to have exciting skills. Go forth and go nuts!!