Book Binding - Blog Posts

What people think why i became a bookbinder: Oh she wants to explore her artistic horizon with those pretty leather bound books of hers. She even gives them out as gifts to her friends. It most likely helps her with anxiety or maybe she just wanted a more special costume made notebook.

Why I actually became a bookbinder: I just illegally downloaded and printed out several of my favourite fanfics and books and started binding them into books cuz I love reading them but looking at screens for too long gives me headaches.

10 in-progress books. Finished book pictures may be coming in the future but only with the author's permission.

Cross stitch at work, book binding at home. Got some great pieces in progress at the moment

tried some new techniques out, and while there are some things to fix, i learned alot. =D story printed with permission: http://hells-half-acre.livejournal.com/190948.html

Sundial linocut centrepiece for a little bookbinding project :)

My personal goal is to try and make fanfic binding as accessible to everyone as possible, so here are some resources on how to make a fanfic hardcover for under $25.

This is a barebones bind for the broke college students and such. Happy to field questions, too!

Here's a proposed budget breakdown:

Loosely organized thoughts:

Fanfic bookbinders often share typesets amongst each other. Never pay for a typeset for a fanfic.

You'll hear a lot about grain direction for your printer paper, but as a newbie on a budget without your own printer, settle for some nice 92 bright paper. If you like the hobby, splurge after but expect to pay at least 2-3x more for short grain paper.

Printing is a pain because some copy shops won't let you print intellectual property smut, and it's very expensive. You are better off bartering instead or looking for a free printer on Buy Nothing.

You know the thick paper wrapping that comes with online orders? It's a good weight for endpapers if you need to scrounge. Paper grocery bags or gift bags (birthday presents) might work, too.

Ask your local library to give you covers from books they are throwing out. Ask for outdated textbooks (those covers are built like tanks) or three-ring binders that are too busted to be binders anymore.

Obtain a used book that was mass produced (so your destruction of it does not impede anyone's access) and maybe even become a little vindictive with it.

If you can afford it, I recommend the Olfa SVR knife (~$10)

If you can afford it, upgrade your ruler to a t-square.

I really hope this resource is helpful! I want to stress how possible this is and encourage people to cherish what they love through art.

If you are interested in fanfic binding and have a little more disposable income, I have an affordable Fan Fiction Bookbinding Starter Pack that I carry on my site. I pack them myself and drop them 1x/month on the 15th.

What people think why i became a bookbinder: Oh she wants to explore her artistic horizon with those pretty leather bound books of hers. She even gives them out as gifts to her friends. It most likely helps her with anxiety or maybe she just wanted a more special costume made notebook.

Why I actually became a bookbinder: I just illegally downloaded and printed out several of my favourite fanfics and books and started binding them into books cuz I love reading them but looking at screens for too long gives me headaches.

Random Motivation of the Day:

I have been hit with the blinding motivation to bind @frostbitebakery’s I Got My Head Checked because it is one of my favorite fics ever and I’ve been meaning to do a close read of it and then i was thinking about how I can’t annotate it and then my brain was like “hmm… but what about make book?” and now this thought is stuck in my head.

do I know how to bind books? no

do I have the materials to bind books? no

do i desperately want to do this anyway? YES

That time I made a book out of an old pair of shoes, about an old pair of shoes, and a friend I don't talk to anymore.

Here is the text, since I know its difficult to read: "I used to have a pair of shoes I liked,

but they started falling apart after a few months.

I wasn't ready to let them go.

So I fixed them again,

and again,

and again,

until there was nothing left to fix

until my feet got soaked in damp grass.

That's what it was like,

being friends with you."

(I also tried doing alt text for the first time, let me know if I can do anything to improve it.)

Time to make some bookssssss

Btw never saw MDF as a book cover material in any tutorial. But right now thin MDF is my favorite material ever... It probably has acid in it or something and I'll find out in 5 years when all my books start yellowing and falling apart, and I will be like "ahhh that's why nobody uses it"

It has some other flaws, like I can't use my favorite method of adding an elastic band. But otherwise love it

Little notebooks

The design on the covers is delivery bag paper

FINALLY AFTER WHO KNOWS HOW LONG

ITS FINISHED

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Artist Made Blank Book. Japanese Book Binding. Hard Cover. Beautiful NEW

A book I made called Lines. It hasn't got any words because words are bad. You can buy your very own hand-bound copy to hold and look at via my website. 

www.parkinparkin.com

I made a little “booklet of warning” as part of a proposal to my wife. Working in black and white with screentone was different and fun for me. Bound this little book with a glued spine and the help of an archivists toolkit (see: bone folding tool). 

Fanbinding(ish): Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir

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.