towns-end-bindery

[towns-end-bindery]

Ovid’s Metamorphoses Rebind

Here is my binding of the Metamophoses of Ovid. The cover (front and back) is a steel plate engraving called The Fall of Phaeton, anonymously created in the 17th century, Netherlands. The image was printed on art canvas with an inkjet printer. The spine title was hand foiled in red with a memory keepers foil quill. This is a three-piece bradel case binding.

Some close up images:

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The trees, having finally got the message to slow down, are saying môr and cefnfor, quiet bass notes of great urgency, whispered with flickering leaves and the sound of far off thunder, a noise that follows Dan all the way to work. Sea and Ocean.

i bound i'm half doomed and you're semi-sweet by The_ Blonde. i love this phanfic, with its talking trees and thieving faeries and mist-shrouded, angry sea. so I made it into a book—twice. you could say one cover is phil-themed and the other dan-themed.

(if you haven't read this fic and want to, please avoid spoilers by not reading the pages pictured here!)

there were lots of new skills to be learned in the making of these books, from the made endpapers (which did turn out slightly rumpled in places, much to my chagrin) to the gold-painted titles (for which I used acrylic and a tiny stencil). and so the books didn't turn out perfectly, but i am still more than happy that they now live on my shelves :>

some pics taken in the sunshine:

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I really shot myself in the foot with how detailed I made these covers 😅 doing all 12 has been… interesting. I decided to do all 12 since there was some interested after I did the first three. I’ll be listing these soon, but honestly I’m not sure how many times I’d want to make these with how intense they are, so I may not keep the listing up after the initial 12 sell 😭 or maybe I’ll simplify the designs a little, I’m not too sure yet. To be fair not many people would want to invest in how much 12 rebound books would cost, so it might not be much of an issue anyway 🤷‍♀️

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My amazing friend, Sapience, does craft bookbinding, and she bound two of my novel-length fics! They are beautiful inside and out, and I'm so delighted and proud to have them.

If you don't have a custom-bound hard copy of these stories but want to read them, I think they're some of my best work!

Like Describing the Alphabet, Firefly, Jayne/Mal, first posted 2004 https://archiveofourown.org/works/8917360

It's Only Castles Burning, X-Men movieverse, Beast/Wolverine, first posted 2016 https://archiveofourown.org/works/6086236

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Today's diary entry ✨ 07.17.25

I haven't posted in forever and I meant to post to this regularly to showcase my work and the parts I love about the creation process. So please take these pictures of my most recent work as an apology 😅

When I saw these beads I immediately thought "ransom letters". It just reminded me of the random magazine letter cut outs used in movies. I'm sure I'll make more covers but this was the first one I made ✨

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Can’t Afford to Fall - p103

This lovely bind was bound for redtulipsbindery for our 1-to-1 trade. The goal was to bind a Drarry fic with “old timey letter/communication” vibes. Me being me, immediately thought typewriter (hence the delicious typewriter keys” - and from there is spiraled into vintage junk journaling.

There are little nods to the fic hidden amongst all the layers here - most notably the “De-Extinguisher“ Harry gifts Draco.

This is THE single most amount of layers I have ever had in play at once. The just jacket was SO much fun to play around with.

I wanted to pair it with an aestheticly classics cover so I used this mahogany Allure bookcloth from @hollanders.book.and.paper.arts - it doesn’t take HTV nicely so I opted for a naked cover.

The speckled edges were an experiment - and while not perfect, they match the books colors so lovely.

I’m pleased with how this bind turned out! 🖤 I think it’s safe to say, from the number of videos I was sent upon its arrival, that it was well received.

Bound for personal use only - no money exchanged. Can be read for free on AO3.

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A Delta Green inspired Bradel Bind empty notebook, for a giveaway at the next ttrpg community meetup.

I experimented for the first time with painted edges for this, and I found that it was quite doable!

In fact I used this one to experiment a bit overall, I cut the edges with my boxcutter - a bit wonky at that width, but it worked. Then I sanded the edges down (I was a bit impatient so there are still some rough spots) and once sanded, I painted the edges.

Here are some progress pictures below the readmore:

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Forgot to post this one in the group of books made recently. This is War,Children by Nonymos. A Stucky, shrinkyklinks modern day AU. What a mouthful.

This book actually means alot. It was @armoredsuperheavy 's copy of War, Children that they made that first brought my attention to fanbinding and bookbinding. It's very sentimental to make this (even if I did get ONE page out of order) and it came out very nice, even with a few flaws.

I might revisit it again in a few years for a eebind. See how my skills improve and style changes.

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Embroidery onto fabrics and turning them into book cloth has to be one of the most rewarding ways to bind books. It creates lovely dimension and helps to give the book character that you may not achieve by just cloth alone.

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A project I’ve been working on recently, rebinding books 1-3 of the AFTG series

Here are some more photos for perusal:

As you can see, each of the text blocks is a slightly different size, and so each fit into the cases I made slightly differently. But this was a fun challenge and I really enjoyed this project!

I intend to do a matching yellow set of books 4-6 once book 6 is out 💛

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Another bradel binding A6 sized empty book! This time I chose blue paper that is possibly as old as I am (my father put it in the cellar ages ago!) to pair with my blue endpapers and my blue bookcloth! Blue³

This is using up some stock that I bought specifically for the author copy of the previous bind, but I love the colors so all is well.

Its a little lopsided (from the spine) and I'll have to check out why that happened, maybe it got skewed in the press? And theres two little areas where the blotting paper (pink) stuck to the cover, possibly because of stray glue. I'll have to wipe everything better before it goes in the press.

But overall a beautiful little blue book. No owner yet, so for now it stands in my bookshelf.

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The trees, having finally got the message to slow down, are saying môr and cefnfor, quiet bass notes of great urgency, whispered with flickering leaves and the sound of far off thunder, a noise that follows Dan all the way to work. Sea and Ocean.

i bound i'm half doomed and you're semi-sweet by The_ Blonde. i love this phanfic, with its talking trees and thieving faeries and mist-shrouded, angry sea. so I made it into a book—twice. you could say one cover is phil-themed and the other dan-themed.

(if you haven't read this fic and want to, please avoid spoilers by not reading the pages pictured here!)

there were lots of new skills to be learned in the making of these books, from the made endpapers (which did turn out slightly rumpled in places, much to my chagrin) to the gold-painted titles (for which I used acrylic and a tiny stencil). and so the books didn't turn out perfectly, but i am still more than happy that they now live on my shelves :>

some pics taken in the sunshine:

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The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë

Birthday present done for a friend

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This journal is called Summer Garden. I was inspired by the flowers and warmth that the summer days brought. It was lovely seeing the colours come to life!

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Zero's Book Binding - Seasons

Seasons by @stinglesswasp

Fandom: Call of Duty (Video Games) Ship: John "Soap" MacTavish/Simon "Ghost" Riley Start Date: 01/03/2025 End Date: 02/24/2025 Second Printing: 07/11/2025 Pages: 127

Ok. So, surprise, it's a paperback.

Season's provided a very specific challenge for me that I haven't face before - which is, technically, that it's a short fic. 'Short' as in this fic is 51K words - so it's not actually a sort fic, it's just shorter then the fics I have bound till now. Additionally - Wasp is a artists as well as a writer. I found them on twitter when I first fell into Ghost/Soap, and I instantly was obsessed. So when I asked if I could bind their fic, I also asked if I could use their art as well.

So! I spent a lot of time weaving the fic art into the typeset. I….need the practice, truly - there is a skill to inlaying images that i have not had the pleasure of practicing yet. I did the best i could and im...really happy, actually.

Ok! I pulled quite a few topographic maps from the rough areas where each chapter takes place. I jazzed them up, surprise, and added color and overlays to better matched the season that was being referenced. I did my best to match the typical font that Wasp uses for their art too in the drop caps and chapter headers - so that everything was as consistent as possible.

Should i have offset the gutter more for this print - so that I didn't cut off the word CHAPTER for every single header? Sure should have. Put it on the list of lessons learned.

Inline breaks match the cover design - which started out fucking crazy, but I pulled back with the design stuff and kept the map idea to be consistent. I printed the cover on 80LB marker paper, which…works for what i needed it to do. It's heavy enough to feel pretty good in hand, but not to heavy to go through my printer.

Is the spine text in the wrong place? Sure is. Could I have fixed this when I reprinted the fic again? Sure could have. Did the spine glue down in a curve that I couldn't fix? Yep.

I followed a DAS Bookbinding tutorial on making soft covers to put this book together. Its….easier then you think? And less expensive. Is it perfect? No, but until I get a better handled on how to do it, it'll just keep working at it. Say it with me: Ya can't be good at a thing the first time you do it.

So I need a better printer, for sure. Especially if I'm going to do more things like this. Some of the images really did not print well, and with the SotM bind in the wings I'm gonna NEED a better printer to chew threw that m o n s t e r.

Thank you again, Wasp, for being cool about me binding your stuff. If you like Goap and haven't read Seasons? My dudes - please go check it out.

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Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence by R.F. Kuang

My second time rebinding Babel, this time for a commission! I was grateful to have been given creative freedom with the design.

It’s heavily inspired by The Locked Library’s special edition of Babel. The image in the gothic window is part of a steel plate engraving. It depicts a 19th century view of the City of Oxford which was drawn and engraved by William Westall A.R.A. and Edward Finden, and was published in Great Britain Illustrated. All other design elements come from Canva. The typeface used is called Lovelace.

I printed my design directly onto plain white Wooqu bookcloth using an inkjet printer. The case was made using the three-piece bradel method. The end papers are green marbled paper from Two Hands Paperie.

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Bookbinding: How Dare You!? / Cheng He Ti Tong by Qi Ying Jun

I also made this for @spockandawe for an exchange! But I wanted to bind it myself, too. Would you believe I made it halfway through this novel before realizing it was by the same author as Are You OK? (the author's name is different on different platforms I guess?) I was like "this author's doing some very neat stuff with transmigration ... hey, wait a sec!"

Since the concept of this novel is transmigrating into a transmigration novel, I made a triple-layer cutout cover. The outermost cover is the "original" novel, followed by the in-universe transmigration novel, and finally the actual novel, where instead of a proper cover design it gets a hastily-written* sharpie title on note paper.

I was going to put more colors in the endbands and fewer in the splatter-painted edges, but it turns out if you only use brown paint for splattered edges ... even if it is a very nice brown in other contexts ... it looks like the book is moldy. So I added some blue too and at that point I thought a multicolored endband would be too much.

My laser printer can't print to the edges of the pages, so for the floral background, I printed just the border on my inkjet printer, and then printed the text of those specific pages afterwards.

There is a typographical easter egg! If you've read the novel, you can see if you can figure it out (it's present on one of the pages pictured here).

*actually I wrote it it about ten times before getting a version I liked enough to use