Leather on bookboard, with hot foil stamping on the spine. The endpapers are a Japanese wave design, partially as a reference to Canaan House being on the water, and is also a reference to the fact that this book was a birthday present for @eebeesee, who is a giant weeb. (Fun fact: I bought that paper in 2012 and have been waiting uh, 11 years, to find the perfect project for it.)
Process under the cut.
Remember two months ago when I said I wasn't wild about doing another paperback-to-hardback conversion? Well. More fool me. (I did try and find a sewn hardback to take apart, but apparently this book was not sold as a sturdy hardback. Cue rant.)
I've tried debossing with leather before, so obviously, for embossing, I decided I'd just pick the most complicated design possible. I had to modify the skull a bit--taking out the IX, which did NOT cut well, and I had to make the lines around the glasses thicker.
After several hours of cricut cutting and experimentation, here is the cover pre-leather. (I also had to floss the skull's teeth with an awl to get some fuzz out, which I found very funny.)
Then, leather:
As you can see, I lose a lot of details in the teeth there, so I went around the edges with a heated brass stylus.
I bought a special skull stamp for the spine: it definitely wasn't made for heat, because while it did serve the purpose, it also came with a metal handle which made handling it awkward. (Oven mitts did not give me the necessary amount of dexterity. I ended up sort of wrapping a paper towel around the handle. My cousin has since informed me that we do own fire resistant gloves, but I did not remember this at the time.)
The stamp was also a pain to get even: it had to be at juuuuust the right temperature and pressure, or you'd either get too much or too little, as shown. It was also pretty picky about foil, but the brass color matched the endband cloth and insides best anyway, so that worked out. (White was a definite no.)
The other fun bit of this was doing the edges: I did them with black foil, but as we established in my earlier foiling experiments, that's not the most reliable. I think I got the best results so far on the top, but kept getting flakes on the others. I ended up painting the outside edge with ink, and then foiling on top of that. The bleed onto the pages ended up looking pretty neat, but since I hadn't done it on the top, I didn't do it on the bottom so that it wouldn't look weird on the inside. I'm not sure the foil added as much gloss as I was hoping for so next time I might just do the ink.
It did mean that I had to separate all the pages twice; I ended up bringing this to my girlfriend's haircut appointment and working on it in the corner. I hope it was the most strangely specific thing the stylist had seen someone doing when they tagged along.
At the end of my rope and it keeps getting longer like some sort of clown handkerchief bit?
Average British Fantasy Author of the 20th Century: Born in Hong Kong, raised in Singapore, Kingston and Oxford, he kissed his first girl at the tender age of 38. He spent 23 years obsessively writing notes for his epic masterwork, the Sword of Gormenlia series, with elements drawn from Indian mysticism, Arthurian mythos, Surrealist poetry, Victorian racism and Radical beliefs[?]. He died in Cyprus where he owned the world's most beautiful houseboat.
Average American Fantasy Author of the 20th Century: Born on the border between Ohio and Montana, Wizjeremiah VanderMcDercken, better known by his pseudonym John "Wizard" Whiteman, was raised in a ghost town and was the only citizen of his county who could read. At the age of 14, he stole a car and drove 30 hours straight to New York City to send his first story "The Alien was Really a Man" to Astounding Stories, for which he was paid a whopping 12$. A string of successes followed, including "The Man was Really a Robot" "The Alien was Really a Wizard" and "The Wizard is Really a Man When You Think About It". He harassed Samuel R. Delany for twelve years over a mild criticism of one of his now out-of-print novels. Died in Yonkers where he had a condo.
Average Canadian Fantasy Author of the 20th Century: Born just outside of Toronto
Average French Fantasy Author of the 20th Century: Despite publishing over 170 novels over a period of fifty years, no one outside of France, or indeed within France, knows who Jean Messac is. Left on the steps of a convent in the south of France, he soon learned to hate the nuns, the books in the local library, Parisians, Americans, specifically the citizens of Syria, the Dominican Republic and Bulgaria, the French literary establishment, Regionalist writers, Sartre, De Gaulle, Casimir, anyone who appeared on TV, Radio, Newspapers and Photographs. He lived in a shoebox gifted to him as a joke from AndrΓ© Breton. He was a high school teacher and wrote for a variety of magazines and publishers, was institutionalized three times and was a Majdanek survivor. His books have all been translated in Russia and Japan following a popular JRPG adapting his saga "Pox-Children of the Kamchadals". He died in the same city where he spent his entire life at the age of 64.
saw a theory that the SmokeStack twins were posing as one man in Chicago, which helped them get away with stealing from both sides. i'm poised to believe that because visually their clothing was very clearly of the two mobs. smoke was full irishβ tweed, bowler hat. while stack had the full mafia look. yk italian leather shoes, fedora etc etc . like the details!!
words cannot describe how much i love showering. my wet contemplative box
You ever hear that old chestnut about how most people neglect the part of the story of Icarus where he also had to avoid flying too low, lest the spray of the sea soak his feathers and cause him to fall and drown? You ever think about how different the world would be if Icarus died that way instead? If the idiom was to Fly To Close To The Sea? A warning against playing it far too safe, about not stretching your wings and soaring properly? You ever think about how Icarus died because he was happy?
wait. do terfs not know that feminizing hrt causes breast tissue to grow. do they think that every single trans woman with any sort of chest got implants. do they not realize that literally anyone with breast tissue can induce lactation. what. huh
well the thing about terfs is that they don't know anything, so jot that down
Thoughts on the term βtheyfabβ to describe a specific type of queer person who regularly regurgitates TERF talking points/brings up their AFAB status to victimise themselves during arguments with trans women while also saying fuck TERFs? Itβs mostly used by transfems from what Iβve seen.
I don't like the term because
1) it's overly divisive and insensitive (defining trans ppl in part by their AGAB)
2) there just aren't that many people like this in the grand scheme of things and the ones that do exist are annoying, but not like a huge problem imo
Trans people do too much infighting, shit like this is just a waste of time
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