#laser prints/copy paper

[philomena-famulok]

©Philomena Famulok

[audiovisualrecall]

Another fanfic binding project complete! :3

Ft hand-painted lettering, which is always nerve-wracking! (I used the stencil on paper to figure out how I wanted the lettering to look, and get a feel for the sizing, and then did it freehand on the book's spine). Plus really fun yellow paper with cap's shield pattern, and green spine and end paper.

Also featuring the original artwork plus some of my own that I felt inspired to create ^^' the artist credit is in the author's note which I also preserved in the book.

[foone]

why are printers so hated? it's simple:

computers are good at computering. they are not good at the real world.

the biggest problems in computers, the ones that have had to change the most over the time they've existed, are the parts that deal with the real world. The keyboard, the mouse, the screen. every computer needs these, but they involve interacting with the real world. that's a problem. that's why they get replaced so much.

now, printers: printers have some of the most complex real-world interaction. they need to deposit ink on paper in 2 dimensions, and that results in at least three ways it can go on right from the start. (this is why 3D printers are just 2D printers that can go wrong in another whole dimension)

scanners fall into many of the same problems printers have, but fewer people have scanners, and they're not as cost-optimized. But they are nearly as annoying.

This is also why you can make a printer better by cutting down on the number of moving elements: laser printers are better than inkjets, because they only need to move in one dimension, and their ink is a powder, not a liquid. and the best-behaved printers of all are thermal printers: no ink and the head doesn't move. That's why every receipt printer is a thermal printer, because they need that shit to work all the time so they can sell shit. And thermal is the most reliable way to do that.

But yeah, cost-optimization is also a big part of why printers are such finicky unreliable bastards: you don't want to pay much for them. Who is excited for all the printing they're gonna be doing? basically nobody. But people get forced to have a printer because they gotta print something, for school or work or the government or whatever. So they want the cheapest thing that'll work. They're not shopping on features and functionality and design, they want something that costs barely anything, and can fucking PRINT. anything else is an optional bonus.

And here's the thing: there's a fundamental limit of how much you can optimize an inkjet printer, and we got near to it in like the late 90s. Every printer since then has just been a tad smaller, a tad faster, and added some gimmicks like printing from WIFI or bluetooth instead of needing to plug in a cable.

And that's the worst place to be in, for a computer component. The "I don't care how fancy it is, just give me one that works" zone. This is why you can buy a keyboard for 20$ and a mouse for 10$ and they both work plenty fine for 90% of users. They're objectively shit compared to the ones in the 60-150$ range, but do they work? yep. So that's what people get.

Printers fell into that zone long, long ago, when people stopped getting excited about "desktop publishing". So with printers shoved into the "make them as cheap as possible" zone, they have gotten exponentially shittier. Can you cut costs by 5$ a printer by making them jam more often? good. make them only last a couple years to save a buck or two per unit? absolutely. Can you make the printer cost 10$ less and make that back on the proprietary ink cartridges? oh, they've been doing that since Billy Clinton was in office.

It's the same place floppy disks were in in about 2000. CD-burners were not yet cheap enough, USB flash drives didn't exist yet (but were coming), modems weren't fast enough yet to copy stuff over the internet, superfloppies hadn't taken over like some hoped, and memory cards were too expensive and not everyone had a drive for them. So we still needed floppy disks, but at the same time this was a technology that hadn't changed in nearly 20 years. So people were tired of paying out the nose for them... the only solution? cut corners. I have floppy disks from 1984 that read perfectly, but a shrinkwrapped box of disks from 1999 will have over half the disks failed. They cut corners on the material quality, the QA process, the cleaning cloth inside the disk, everything they could. And the disks were shit as a result.

So, printers are in that particular note of the death-spiral where they've reached the point of "no one likes or cares about this technology, but it's still required so it's gone to shit". That's why they are so annoying, so unreliable, so fucking crap.

So, here's the good news:

You can still buy a better printer, and it will work far better. Laser printers still exist, and LED printers work the same way but even cheaper. They're still more expensive than inkjets (especially if you need color), but if you have to print stuff, they're a godsend. Way more reliable.

This is not a stable equilibrium. Printers cannot limp along in this terrible state forever. You know why I brought up floppy disk there? (besides the fact I'm a giant floppy disk nerd) because floppy disks GOT REPLACED. Have you used one this decade? CD-Rs and USB drives and internet sharing came along and ate the lunch of floppy disks, so much so that it's been over a decade since any more have been made. The same will happen to (inkjet) printers, eventually. This kind of clearly-broken situation cannot hold. It'll push people to go paperless, for companies to build cheaper alternatives to take over from the inkjets, or someone will come up with a new, more reliable printer based on some new technology that's now cheap enough to use in printers. Yeah, it sucks right now, but it can't last.

So, in conclusion: Printers suck, but this is both an innate problem caused by them having to deal with so much fucking Real World, and a local minimum of reliability that we're currently stuck in. Eventually we'll get out of this valley on the graph and printers will bother people a lot less.

Random fun facts about printing of the past and their local minimums:

in the hot metal type era, not only would the whole printing process expose you to lead, the most common method of printing text was the linotype, which could go wrong in a very fun way: if the next for a line wasn't properly justified (filling out the whole row), it could "squirt", and lead would escape through gaps in the type matrix. This would result in molten lead squirting out of the machine, possibly onto the operator. Anecdotally, linotype operators would sometimes recognize each other on the street because of the telltale spots on their forearms where they had white splotches where no hair grew, because they got bad lead burns. This type of printing remained in use until the 80s.

Another fun type of now-retired printers are drum printers, a type of line printer. These work something like a typewriter or dot-matrix printer, except the elements extend across the entire width of the paper. So instead of printing a character at time by smacking it into the paper, the whole line got smacked nearly at once. The problem is that if the paper jammed and the printer continued to try to print, that line of the paper would be repeatedly struck at high speed, creating a lot of heat. This worry created the now-infamous Linux error: "lp0 on fire". This was displayed when the error signals from a parallel printer didn't make sense... and it was a real worry. A high speed printer could definitely set the paper on fire, though this was rare.

So... one thing to be grateful about current shitty inkjet printers: they are very unlikely to burn anything, especially you.

(because before they could do that they'd have to work, at least a little, first, and that's very unlikely)

[fajriworld]

Tempat Print Murah | 24 Jam Jakarta Timur

Tempat Print Murah | 24 Jam Jakarta Timur Utas ⬇️

Assalamualikum wr. Wb Fajriz Printing bergerak di bidang Fotocopy, Percetakan dan Offset printing menyediakan segala kebutuhan percetakan, Foto copy, Digital printing, offset Printing dan segala bentuk percetakan lainnya. Percayakan semua perkerjaan percetakan kamu kepada kami dan kami kerjakan dengan tangan tangan terbaik dibidangnya, dan tentunya dengan hasil maksimal demi kepuasan konsumen…

[netherworldpost]

With the various rumors and releases of Tumblr possibly changing how they do things... (gestures to the vague rumor mill)...

Zines.

I really think we as Folks Who Make Things and Folks Who Like Art Writing Poetry Music Comics Other Things need to explore zines. And I mean ZINES. Nothing glossy. Nothing fancy.

Very. Cheap. Zines.

I've been threatening mentioning I was going to create a guide on how I'm going to approach this -- and I'm going to -- but I am also realizing in the writing I Do Things Highfalutin because I am who I am + had a career in graphic design.

Let's talk about how you can make a zine very cheaply and very pretty.

STEP ONE: SUPPLIES

Very bright paper. I like "Astrobrights" because they are absurdly bright. Here is a link in a store I like. I buy a lot of paper and envelopes from them. You can generally find Astrobrights in big box office stores. It prints on laser printers and ink jet and photocopiers.

Very bright envelopes. What's that? Astrobrights has envelopes?! AM I SOLVING PROBLEMS let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Letter paper is 8.5" x 11" and is the most common size in the united states (overseas folk will have to use this advice with a grain o'sea salt and search yer own waters).

A9 envelopes are a letter sheet folded in half.

A2 envelopes are a letter sheet folded in half, then folded in half.

#10 envelopes are your common long envelopes, letter paper folded in thirds.

Pick the size you like.

If you want to get big and fancy, Tabloid is 17" x 11" -- so double a letter sheet. This gets tricky to work with but is neat in sizing.

STEP TWO: ZINE CONTENT

Do you know how to use InDesign or similar program? Use that.

No? Use Google Docs or Word or whatever other program and ramble.

Want something special? Write out some or part with a sharpee or pen.

Mix and match both.

If you are feeling fancy, design it like a booklet -- mock up a sheet of blank paper as if it were a brochure. If not, just design it straight up and down like a letter. There are no zine laws.

STEP THREE: ZINE PRINTING

Print at home on your home printer.

Don't have a printer at home? Print it at work (don't get fired)

Can't? Your local library may be able to help.

You need 1 copy on white paper.

FedEx Office has photocopiers. Your local library may too. Or your job.

Print 1 copy of your zine on white paper and then photocopy the rest onto colorful paper (or white paper, it be yer zine seadog).

Or print everything on the color paper if you have access to free printing, that's fine too.

The photocopy setup is purely "printing tends to cost more than photocopying."

If you want to slash prices, print 2 per sheet and have FedEx office cut them for you, this will cost $1 - $5 depending on how many sheets you are dealing with. This is for when you're doing a LOT of zines at once.

Or use their manual paper cutter yourself for free.

STEP FOUR: ZINE STAPLING

"Long reach stapler" is what I recommend. There are a few varieties. They tend to be $20 - $30.

Or just use 1 sheet!

STEP FOUR: ZINE POSTAGE

A single first class stamp for 1-2 pages. If you get up to 3+, go to the post office and ask them to weigh a comp you have assembled.

This is a guideline.

It's a really good idea to check at least once how much your zine weighs just in general. Post offices have scales. And are pretty. And have stamps.

OKAY ENOUGH LUSTING FOR THE POST OFFICE FROM THE GHOTS POST OFFICE BLOG BACK TO WORK

STEP FIVE: ZINE MAILING

This is actually the most difficult part. Label printers exist with various costs -- if you're starting out? Go with printable labels.

Your office supply shop will have them and they'll have templates you can drop in the customer addresses.

Save yourself time by using this label as the thing that seals the envelope -- don't lick envelopes.

A key tenet to staying in business is constantly reviewing physical (and mental) labor and stressors and reducing them as much as possible.

Return address labels are intensely cheap in literally every online printer, google "return address labels." Make sure you have this because at least a few of your shipments will come back to you.

STEP SIX: ZINE PRICING

Okay here is where we get uncomfortable because we're talkin' coins.

Prices are based on above links. You can get whatever paper you want, so this is guidelines. All numbers rounded up.

Payment processing ($0.30) + $0.05 sheet + $0.15 envelope + $0.66 first class postage = $1.16 base cost

$1.16 + 2.9% of $1.16 payment processing = $1.20

Plus taxes. I'm not getting into tax figures YOU DO THAT (just say 30% for easy math, this is not saying "your taxes are 30% or that mine are" I am saying "I am going to factor 30% for this equation to complete this guide".)

I did not include the mailing label (it will be $0.01 - $0.05 depending on how fancy and how many you buy) because you have the option to just write things and also it fits into the rounding of the above.

If you use Patreon, include your fees. Probably replace the above processing fees with your patreon processing... fees? I don't use patreon I don't know how it works.

Retail option 01: $1.50 - 1.20 = $0.80 gross - 30% = $0.09 / net / zine.

Retail option 02: $2 - 1.20 = $0.80 gross - 30% = $0.56 / net / zine.

Retail option 03: $3 - 1.20 = $1.80 gross - 30% = $1.26 / net / zine.

Should it be $1.50? Should it be $3.00? MORE? LESS?! That is for you to decide. Base it on what your zine contains, how long it takes you to write/draw/etc. it and how you want your flow to be.

STEP SEVEN: ZINE FREQUENCY

When my shop launches, it'll have a zine once a month. We are going to offer a subscription option + a "I just want 1" option.

You can do a zine monthly, or every few months, or whatever.

Keep in mind that the purpose of doing this is to break the dependency on social media marketing.

KEEP IN MIND AS AN AUDIENCE MEMBER TO A CREATOR YOU LIKE THAT THEY ARE DOING THIS TO BREAK THEIR DEPENDENCY ON SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING.

If you have a lot of energy and an audience that comes to your shop a lot? Consider doing a zine monthly.

If you do not have a lot of energy and/or your audience is tapped for cash frequently? Considering doing 1 zine per season.

Consider 2 zines a year if that works better for you!

NO RULES ONLY JOY

Not sure? Experiment! Be upfront! "This is new. I'm figuring this out. Billionaires are tinkering with these things and we gotta figure something else out."

BONUS STEP: NETHERWORLDPOST.COM

so hi I'm atty and I'm your loud long rambler today

Netherworld Post Office used to be @evilsupplyco and now we are rebranding in prep of relaunching. Same person behind the rambles and comics, new name with a more focus (mail instead of mail + seemingly everything else in experiment)

if you enjoyed this ramble and/or like ghosts, monsters, witches, mermaids, and fun stories and projects focused on cozy Halloween, you may like us when we finish the rebranding and relaunching in autumn 2023.

email sign up (the zine will come when we are open)

WHETHER YOU JOIN MY LIST OR NOT

I really, really, really hope you consider doing a regular, or irregular, zine. Something outside of email, something outside of social media, something that connects I MADE A WEIRD THING and the people who say I LOVE THIS WEIRD THING YOU MADE.

The walls are closing in on free social media as a platform for people who make weird things to build audiences for free or very cheap.

And with that...

netherworldpost.com as one final hat pass

good luck folks

thanks for listenin' to the ol' ghost

[kulapti]

Aug 2023, bookbinding of The Silent Isle Imbowers by Tharkuun.

I’m sooo so so pleased to finally share this! I have been actively working on this for many months and waited until Tharkuun received her copy before posting so the final result would be a surprise.

-----------About this bookbinding under the cut

This binding has been one of the more elaborate pieces I have attempted so far. This has been my first binding where I (1) made three copies of a piece at once, (2) used a modified a historical illustration, (3) collaborated directly with another artist on the decorative elements, (4) finished matching art for the cover and title page, and (5) layered paint and heat-transfer vinyl for the covers. These are also (6) the first non-tiny books I have made with this style of hinge and cover attachment.

Pretty much immediately after I first read this story I felt I had to make myself a copy of this. I had a strong mental image of a vintage-looking cover for a fairy tale, with a deceptively simple design of flowers on the cover, probably with fancy metallic accents, the kind of thing you’d find in an interesting used bookstore with no summary, no text on the back, no dust jacket, just the flowers and maybe a title. I’m going to make a separate post about making this cover design a reality because oh man has it been a journey lol! I designed and drew the digital art for the cover (digital because of the cut and application method), as well as the corresponding title page illustration (pencil and dip pen, scanned, title added digitally).

When I asked Tharkuun about it she was excited to suggest I get in touch with quillingwords, who generously agreed to collaborate with me! Among her talents quilling writes calligraphy, and hand wrote both the book title and chapter headers for me to incorporate into my plans. Check OUT those chapter headers! So fancy! A font could never!! Quilling has also been very encouraging and let me yell about this project in dms for months so the final result could be a surprise for Tharkuun. Thank u so much quillingwords, your calligraphy adds invaluable amounts of swag to this project.

I was going to do some kinda neat font for the chapter headers, but quilling’s work is too cool for that and I decided to use a modified piece of a historical illustration instead. The illustration also happens to be cool as heck: I was browsing the Artstor database (an academic quality resource available for free via Jstor, my beloved) and found E. N. Neureuther's 1836 gorgeous etching for etching of the fairy tale Briar Rose, an illustration made for a printing of a Brothers Grimm recorded German fairy tale with Sleeping Beauty elements. Much to my delight this illustration not only matches the general look I wanted but is actually relevant to the story, itself a Sleeping Beauty spinoff.

Slightly less stylistically consistent are the endpapers, which are prints of two different paintings by Arnold Böcklin: Isle of the Dead (1883) in the front and Isle of Life (1888). The first painting had occurred to me as an excellent visual to go with the story, and Tharkuun and I discussed this and agreed that pairing it with the related later, more optimistic piece was too thematically appropriate to resist.

I had fun and learned a lot making these books and I am very pleased with the result!!

Materials: Archival bookboard, cardstock, cotton cheesecloth mull, archival PVA glue, linen thread coated in beeswax, paper cord, red cotton embroidery floss. Blue cotton backed with archival paper, acrylic paint, machine cut black and gold heat-transfer vinyl. Laser printed text and illustrations. Metallic scrapbooking paper.

[sits-bound]

Bound: You Can Fall by @wordthieve

Yay, the author copy finally arrived at its destination, so I can post about this bind that I did earlier this month.

Well, first of all, this is one of my favorite fics, definitely in the top 3 of Schitt's Creek fics. The angst is top notch. It was always on my list to bind, so I'm happy to have it on my shelf now.

And, as a bonus, I included the chapters from the follow-up fic that fit in between the chapters of You Can Fall.

The cover for this is paper (with a cloth spine) and I love the freedom that gives me with the design. I laser printed heavy paper and foiled the design.

God, I love those endpapers. (Ink Drops by Craft Consortium)

Fonts used:

Titles and chapter heads and drop caps: Chandler42 Body text: Corundum Text my beloved

[itstimewehavesomesoliddick]

Wow it's crazy how many secret documents about detailed secret evil plans Hamas fighters carried on themselves both on printed paper and USB keys, they must have pretty bad memory if they need to bring their entire stack of secret briefing documents with them in the field, I can't wait to hear about how they found a 1TB HDD on one of them that includes plans for a doom laser satellite with its targeting system set to "infants", a 4K scan of a note reading "it was me, I sold the weapons t. Putin" and illicit pirated copies of marvel movies (because piracy is a crime and hurting Hollywood profits is literally terrorism)

[jinkieswouldyoulookatthis]

So I’ve been into bookbinding lately (thanks, adhd randomized hyperfocus) and have wanted to try my hand at binding a novel, instead of just blank books. But, alas, I have not written a novel and didn't want to do a collection of short stories. Plus printing and binding my own stories feels, I don't know, kinda weirdly egocentric.

Then I read @applecrumbledore’s Pine sweat and fell so in love with it that I asked Roni if I could bind their story into a book. I offered to make two copies and send them one. They graciously agreed and I set out on a months long slog through learning typesetting and figuring out the logistics of printing a book.

I had to pick the right paper (went with a 24 lb 100% cotton in ivory), the right fonts, find the right leather and fabric for the quarter binding I wanted to do, and find a coordinating endpaper.

And figured out how (and where) to print it.

Finally had two copies printed! Now onto assembly...

So once I had my copy done, and figured out what I was doing, it was time to move onto the author’s copy…

Done! So much better than the first copy (hooray for learning as we go). Mistakes I made that I fixed for the author's copy...

As I was sewing the 2nd copy together I realized that I'd double printed one of the signatures and, sure enough, my copy has pages 155-174 twice... *sad trombone* But I caught the error in time so the 2nd copy doesn't duplicate any pages. And luckily I didn't accidentally skip any pages, that would have been a much more upsetting problem.

On my copy I'd tried to trim the leading edge of the pages, but I don't have the proper tools to do it so I butcher the edge. This is bugs me, but I took it as a learning experience and my copy will serve as a reminder to not do that again.

I cut the case boards a little too small on mine, adjusted on the 2nd copy and they turned out perfect.

I didn't get the end papers lined up quite right on mine, and although the front end paper creased weirdly near the spine on the 2nd copy, it still looks so much better that it's an acceptable flaw.

All in all, this was a really positive experience and I'm still riding the creative high that comes from making a thing that is, frankly, beautiful. Now I want to make more, I just need to find a better way to print since I don't think my work would appreciate me printing smutty fan fiction on their laser printers 😬

September 7th, 2023 - I mailed @applecrumbledore the second copy today and it wasn't lost on me how fitting it seemed that the mid-Atlantic region, where I live, is having a heatwave (high of 93ºF/34ºC today). But I'm not posting this until they receive it, so as not to spoil the surprise of the reveal, so maybe, things will be cooler then.

Sept. 14th, 2023 - It arrived! Happily in good condition. And it is cooler!!! Not as cold as the end of the story certainly, no blizzards anytime soon (I hope) but only 66ºF/19ºC at it's destination. So it's cracking me up that the book's journey took it from sweltering heat to cool-ish temps sort of like the story.

[greenhorn-art]

Keep Your Head Up to the Sky (As Your Day Unfolds) by alphera [Twitter]

Illustrated by Shirou_UOHS @shirou-oh-sakura

Fandom: 全职高手 | The King's Avatar

Rating: General Audiences

Category: M/M

Words: 9 270

Time is rarely kind, and impossible to escape. At the ripe old age of 30, Han Wenqing retires from the Glory Professional Alliance and moves forward the only way he knows how: fearlessly and without hesitation.

About the Book

FONTS: Coelacanth, Segoe UI Emoji

IMAGES: Illustrations by Shirou; pastel sky ID: 7007221 from Rawpixel; dark blue sky ID: 7044483 from Rawpixel; Han Wenqing & Desert Dust image from The King's Avatar Wikia; Ye Xiu & Lord Grim image also from TKA Wikia; Glory card png also made by Shirou via Discord

MATERIALS: regular ol' printer paper (8.5"x11", 20lb, 96 bright); ~1.5mm chipboard; Neenah cardstock (8.5"x11", 65lb, bright white); Iris bookcloth (Madeira colour); paper from Gilded Ink paper pad by Recollections; waxed linen thread (30/3 size, white); wheat paste (1:4 flour:water)

PROGRAMS USED: typeset in Affinity Publisher 2; endpapers designed with Affinity Designer 2 and Affinity Photo 2; imposed with Renegade's Community Imposer (settings: Quarto, snug against binding edge, signatures of 2 sheets).

Text & QR codes printed with colour laser printer (duplex, flip long edge), images printed with inkjet printer (HP Envy 5055; one sheet at a time, single sided, place facedown in tray)

BINDING: quarto (quarter-letter) size, sewn board binding with french link stitch and breakaway spine.

.

Absolutely LOVED this story! I've reread this one a number of times, and keep going back for more. Alphera's writing is so good! Ye Xiu is the series protagonist so things usually follow him, which makes it refreshing to see a story through Han Wenqing's eyes. And the author does it SO WELL! AHHH!

It's been a while since my first read-through, but I'm pretty sure this was the first TKA fic that I actually downloaded and started typesetting. Absolutely chuffed to have it finished! (Love me some growth-- the typeset looks a LOT better than my earlier attempts!)

RAMBLES

Another sewn board binding and breakaway spine! Since this isn't my first go at it, the construction of the book was considerably faster and smoother than my last one. It's just as well, because I ran into a speed bump that stretched out how long it took to typeset and print.

The culprit: (very pretty) illustrations. My laser's colour printing capabilities are shot to hell, so I used my inkjet for the artwork. This involved creating 3 copies of my typeset: 1) the completed typeset; 2) just the text, images hidden; 3) just the images, text hidden/white. Then I ran them through the imposer and printed the text version. The real issue was figuring out how to feed the sheets through my inkjet printer to print the images where I want them. Had to go one page at a time, single-sided. (Just need to place sheet facedown in the tray. So flip along vertical axis.) It took a while, but I got there in the end. And the results were SO worth it! 😊

For the scene breaks I left them as written. I had tried inserting images of the Glory Logo and account card, or using crossed swords emojis ⚔️, but nothing I tried worked as well as what the author did. (It's really neat! Different characters were used to indicate the direction of the timeskip: >>>> for a jump forward in time; <<<< for a flash into the past; and ==== for regular scene breaks, a 'next' rather than 'before' or 'later/after'.)

The cover and endpapers were based off of Shirou's fantastic cover illustration of HQW and YX walking hand-in-hand down a beach at sunset. The art itself is phenomenal so I had it stand alone as a frontispiece and didn't do anything fancy with the title page. For the covers, I looked through my decorative paper stash for something red or black to represent HWQ or Team Tyranny. What I found was paper with pinks, oranges, and purples similar to that illustration -- and that was that. I liked how the colours matched the art, and the gold splashed across it. (Gold for victory, gold for wedding rings and a happy golden future together.)

(Sidenote: I love how the beginning of the end of HWQ's career as an e-sports player "starts with a tingle in his ring finger", leading him and YX to taking the next steps in their relationship and eventually getting married 💍🖐)

I went with a red bookcloth for the spine because it's a common team colour for Tyranny, Excellent Era, and Happy. It also represents good fortune, courage, passion, and love -- things that come to mind when I think about YX, HWQ, and HanYe. The particular shade of red I used is Madeira. It's darker than Ruby Red and leans a little cooler, which suits the decorative paper more.

The endpapers use two background images (overlayed, adjusted, using multiple blending modes) and some images of HWQ and YX from The King's Avatar Wikia.

The background images are from Rawpixel -- I was just minding my own business looking for images of clouds and maybe some mountains to represent overcoming challenges/glory/looking up to the sky, when I found some clouds with the same sunset colours of Shirou's art. Figured it was too perfect, and if I'm going to lean into that design-wise, I might as well go whole hog and full-ass it. Then I found a starry night sky to add some darker blues and stars to it to match. After that it was a matter of overlapping them and positioning them to fit. I also grabbed some images of HWQ and YX from the King's Avatar Wikia and added them to it because HanYe. (After removing the backgrounds).

[strange-townie]

Simmers, I can't believe it! I just opened my first Etsy Shop after months of work 🥺 My Sims 2 Neighborhoods edits are now available in prints! 💚

I have carried out the entire creation process with love 🥰 I wanted my babies to look as good as they deserve, and I have been testing until I find the best result ✨ These are some improvements:

✅ Changed characters composition to fit A4 and A3 sizes, so you can find cute frames easily 🎁 ✅ Color and quality optimized for printing, edited to achieve vivid colors and greater sharpness 🔍 ✅ Materialized by laser printing on Color Copy paper of 250 gr., which gives the final touch ✨

A simple like 💗 helps me a lot! Hope you visit and enjoy! ✨

[philomena-famulok]

©Philomena Famulok

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[gargoyleandgremlinpress]

Five Dogs, One Cat by Ryfkah

"If you’ve ever believed me in anything, believe I want what’s best for Jin Ling," the first line of the letter reads. Jiang Cheng has to stop and take a moment before he continues on to the next line: "You must come to Carp Tower as soon as you can and lavish praise on the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen."

I love this fic! It's a funny, touching, post-canon MDZS story about Jin Ling's relationship with Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian, and comes with an inevitable side of Yunmeng bros reconciliation.

This was another Binderary project, and a belated Christmas present. I made one copy for me, and one for the friend who introduced me to both this fic, and The Untamed. The cover is printed on a piece of cotton sheet (temporarily backed with freezer paper) with a home laser printer. The endpapers are Nepalese Lokta paper. The spine is acrylic paint using Cricut stencil vinyl. At under 14k, this fic made a cute little half-sized quarto book, just under a hundred pages.

I did my best to match up the different dogs in each chapter using public domain images. There are a few errors in the chapter opening typesetting I only caught AFTER everything was all glued (of course).

This is probably the lower limit for what I'd want to sew endbands on. The spine was skinny enough that it was decidedly fiddly.

I am a sucker for a classic 5+1 format, and I just love the ending for this one!

[java-dragon]

Bookbinding/Fan binding for beginners by... a beginner PART ONE

SO YOU WANNA BE A FANBINDER EH!?

RIGHT! so it felt like maybe it might be sorta kinda helpful to put something about a 'how to do the thing' together. Buckle in this is going to be a ride and a half. Edit as of November 16th 2023 The Master List for EVERYTHING is

HERE

SO, first thing is first- if you're fan binding there is a bit of etiquette to follow. But it is just good manners to ask permission to fan bind the fic you're interested in. See if the author has a FAQ available where they state the Yay or the Nay. Submit a DM or a comment. But as a note of disclaimer- this is for PERSONAL USE ONLY. THIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE SOLD ANYWHERE. LOOKING AT YOU ETSY FAN FIC SELLERS THAT CAN GET EVERYONE INTO A FUCK TON OF TROUBLE. That is a breech of fair use laws. Don't breech fair use laws. Don't be a dick.

If you happen to have a EPUB or PDF copy of a fic that has been deleted and you wish to bind it or if you receive no response to the author in question, nod your head, know that you did your best and proceed on with the project and make your fic to put on your shelf. Sleep well knowing you did your best and you can do nothing else.

But if you receive a Nay- don't be a dick honour the author's choice and plop the fic on your ereader and call it good.

Now that we got that all out of the way. ONWARD!

MATERIALS! Musts: (The optional materials will be marked as "OP") Access to a Word processor Printer with duplex printing (It prints on both sides of the page) Fic Printer Paper- regular printer paper is FINE if you're being budget conscious. But if you'd like to splurge:

Hammermill Copy Paper But the Most bang for your buck is Church's Paper

Please note: These are US based links, and I am going from what and where I am located you might have to go to a local paper shop. If you want your book to feel very book-like see if your paper shop can take 11 x 17 paper and cut it in half for you which yields 8.5 x 11 paper on the short grain (paper has a grain there is a stiff side and a floppy side, much like fabric, by cutting the paper in half it makes it more 'floppy' and thus more book like)

a punch cradle I use one made by HoneyMinCo - or some sort of punch guide

Awl

Glue- Elmer's Glue All, Tacky, Lineco , PH Neutral all will do what you need it to do

Waxed linen thread

Curved Needles

Book press- you can make these for cheap with wooden cutting boards, bolts and wing nuts.

A brush you don't mind getting glue all over or you can use a silicone face mask brush like this hell I even use my fingers at times

box cutter or any sort of cutting tool, rotary tool

scissors

metal rulers help

spacers (Not necessary but helpful to have you can also DIY this for cheap) OP

Davy Board/Chip Board/Book Board AKA dense AF cardboard

and some sort of thick paper- like a cardstock

bone folder - butter knives also work in a pinch

Recommendations:

For Printers- Epson ECO Tanks are the best bang for your your buck ink wise and has duplex printing. Inkjet and colour options. Some binders swear by laser printers for speed and the general look for the final product but use what you have. Just make sure you have extra ink on hand.

The upfront costs can be pretty steep but a lot of the materials can be steep but you can get crafty and raid a dollar store and charity shops.

Up Next- How to get a Fic from AO3 to your word processor and how to format a document to get it ready for printing and likely more links, and some people to watch on TikTok or Youtube.

Edit: 11/1/2023:

There is a Fan Binding Starter Kit Found here

[purenonsens]

Hey look! I made a test zine with my OCs!! It looks better than expected, I’m very pleased. Pages are printed on green fluo 80gsm sheets (with minimal ghosting given the amount of black! that was my biggest worry) on my home laser printer. Cover is 160gsm black paper with transfer foil (posted about it once HERE). Tools I used also include a laminator (for the foil), paper guillotine and THIS glorious thing.

What do you think??? Do you like it? Would you be interested in purchasing one? I don’t know if I would make copies to sell yet (packing stuff and post office queues are NOT my thing lol), but any feedback is valuable! Thank you in advance<3

* Characters on the pages are my OCs which you can find in color under my OC tag or HERE in an ebook form (HERE is a tumblr post).

[oliveroctavius]

There are a bunch of sexy shiny Spider-Verse "your spidersona" zine apps opening around now.... What if I ran the opposite. Old fashioned black-and-white fanzine style, laser jet construction-paper half sheet booklet, no application process no deadline no pressure anyone who wants in gets in