mahoganydoodles

[mahoganydoodles]

They’ve released not just digitized works of art, but also a great many art history texts and art books in general. Just this week, they announced an expansion of access to their digital archive, in that they’ve made nearly 88,000 images free to download on their Open Content database under Creative Commons Zero (CC0). That means “you can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.”

88,000 new free images just dropped, to use however you like.

#!!!!! #bookbinding resources #ART!

[mahoganydoodles]

My bookbinding tools and stuff

I started binding in July 2023, so I'm certainly no expert, but in case you're interested in what I use to create my binds…

I use Adobe InDesign to typeset and Illustrator for graphics

I print on an old Canon laser printer for black and white and an Epson ET-3830 inkjet for color

I purchase my shortgrain paper from Church Paper (for folios) and the long grain paper I use for quartos is just whatever (nothing special)

I love my punching cradle and guide that I got off etsy.

I use this thread (that I wax with beeswax) for sewing signatures

I love this cardstock for endpapers (Craft Consortium ink drops)

I like this bookboard (in black specifically)

I use these tools for spacing and squaring when creating covers

Everything gets stuck together with this glue. (GET THE POINTY TOP!)

I have an old Silhouette Cameo for cutting vinyl and applying foil to bookcloth (with this pen)

I use this foil quill for freehanding

I apply laser toner foil with this Scotch laminator

I have a thermal binding machine from Amazon and I use these glue strips with it

I have this guillotine (but I don't recommend black for visibility reasons)

I have purchased bookcloth from Hollander's, Colophon, and Amazon

Get this head and bond if you want to make your own bookcloth

I make ribbon bookmarks with charms like these and these crimps.

I get positive feedback and help and kindness from @renegadeguild

Caveat: These are just the tools and supplies I use. I am not an expert. I'm a hobbyist who is relatively new to it. Some of the things I use might be "wrong" but every book I've made works, so who cares?

If you want to see what it looks like when I bind something, here's a short video.

#bookbinding resources

[mahoganydoodles]

“On the Nature of Tarnished Souls”

Bookbinding is coming along, I’ve actually got a journal pamphlet up on my Etsy.

Instagram

Etsy

#! #gorgeous #not my bookbinding

[mahoganydoodles]

Practical Results by anonymous

This isn’t his bedroom - not the one at the compound, or the suite in Milan. Definitely not the penthouse in New York. In all honesty, it looks like the inside of the fucking Spaceship Earth ride at Epcot.

For design info / materials / binding process, read below the cut.

Keep reading

#I! Love! This! Bind! #the color blocking is soooooo cool #especially on the spine edge! #incredible #absolutely incredible

[mahoganydoodles]

coloured edges with colourshift acrylic inks

One of the things that baffles me most is how these colours look like nothing on a white ground, just a pale pearly shimmer that often doesn't even look much like the colours it shifts to, but have a dark surface and there it is.

I still have to get the hang of how much to dilute these acrylic inks for colouring edges though (I had a bad case of flaking with the first edge I coloured and needed to do it new, but it still turned out with a nice shift eventually).

#wooooooooaaahhhhhhhhhh #color shift!!!!!!! #not my bookbinding

[mahoganydoodles]

my year in books!

this week it is a year since my first bookbinding endeavor. it's wild to think about! i'm so proud of everything i made this year and am looking forward to continuing my work ❤️

#what an incredible creative collection #i especially LOVE the decorative stitches #so so so cool #spine embroidery :') #the variety of forms and cover design (esp. 3D!) is amazing #not my bookbinding

[mahoganydoodles]

Forty books later, I've made another set of this fanfic by @theaguanzon, which does the best job of capturing how it felt to be 13 and reading Star Wars books in the 2000s. This set is a collaboration between myself and @selunchen, who did an amazing job illustrating the covers!

(The covers are inspired by an iconic Star Wars teaser poster. Do you know which one?)

This bind incorporates all the new techniques I've picked up over 2.5 years in this hobby. I foiled the line art on veg tan goat leather from Siegel, and there are Crepaldi endpapers and bookmark charms from @afterblossom.

The maps are based on Legends maps designed by Dan Wallace, Jason Fry, Chris Barbieri, and James Luceno. I revamped the typeset and painted the edges with a galaxy splatter pattern, and this bind is also rounded and backed.

#HAHA when i first saw those charms i knew instantly where they must have come from #as I have a set of earrings i loveeeeeeee from afterblossom #using them as bookmark charms is SUUCCHHH a cool idea #the deep purple is so regal #such a perfect choice for this bind #as well as the two different profiles of the Force aspects as well as the Head of State aspects of themselves #always stunned by your quality of work and incredible ideas! #gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous #OOOO ALSO THE EDGES #and are the ribbons rainbow or color shifting??? #what cool juxtaposition against the galaxy edges #not my bookbinding

[mahoganydoodles]

The Black Death is a hand-bound book with the history of the Black Death that happened in the middle ages. The book’s style is based on the medieval manuscripts of the time. It contains art and accounts of the period as well.

#woooooooooowwww #love that the design was inspired by period-typical binds! #SO cool #not my bookbinding

[mahoganydoodles]

the eagle has landed, and now i can talk about it >;3c

i had the pleasure of typesetting and binding @starshipcaptainjojo's zolu series conquering, and this was a delightful project from start to finish.

the bind is a three-piece bradel with covers made from individual pieces of marbled, splattered, or stamped lokta paper and gold heat transfer foil. on the back cover, i've also foiled the series's tagline. i wanted to mirror the typeset, which includes images of historical rugs, tapestries, and paper at the beginning of each story in the anthology--and i think it succeeded! (even if i ended up unintentionally making a mardi gras bind. that i finished on mardi gras. incredible.)

the endsheets are a thicker black silver/gold marble, and the bookmark is a looped 4mm silk ribbon tipped with an 18k gold clasp and a sun charm. i'm particularly proud of this bind's edges, which i painted with two layers of diluted acrylic: dark green and metallic light green shimmer. like the gold foiling, it doesn't come through well in pictures... but i promise this book is very shiny :3c

last but certainly not least, i also got permission from @/veryqueerdraws to include a comic they drew for jojo's fic stamina, which i won't include photos of lest tumblr obliterate me on sight for... obvious reasons. i believe its posted on their twitter, though!

#the c o l o r s #every since i first saw this book i've been thinking about these colors #mardi gras mardi gras #it's such a lovely combination that you don't see very often #and to see it in such MAGNIFICENCE here is ahhh #gosh the blend of the marbled endpapers with the decorative bar alongside the chapter title with the cover paper... #beyoutiful!!! #not my bookbinding

[mahoganydoodles]

another fancy lil quarto for binderary! gotta say, i am kind of falling in love with letter quartos. they are the perfect book size to me :3

anyway! this is "a pearl of great price" by eyegnats, aka the best magical girl au ever written. (basically all of gnats's fire emblem three houses fic goes hard as hell, but this one is up there as one of my Big Faves, haha.)

the bonus copy is for gnats, obviously XP i did the endbands slightly different on the author copy (tried mixing strands of multiple metallic threads to get a pearlescent look; not sure if it succeeded but it looks cool regardless) vs on my copy (kept the endbands plain silver cuz i didnt want to put in the extra effort for my personal copy, lmao). you can see the difference in the second and fourth pics.

re: design choices, i wanted the exterior to be all pearly and shiny, and the interior to be more colorful. hence the teal endpages (ingrid color) and the light peachy colored pages (annette color) :3c

also, heres a video showing off how shiny it is!

#TEXTURED COVERS???? #oh my #OH my #B E A U T I F U L #and the color scheme #! #pearlescent indeed!!!!!!!! #gosh this is gorgeous #love the section break too #omg i just wanna touch the cover so bad #lovely lovely bind!!! beautiful!!! #not my bookbinding

[mahoganydoodles]

excellent news from usps--i can now talk about this beauty!! i had the pleasure of typesetting and binding @the-furthest-city-light's wonderful zolu fic spill your wine and it was a ride from start to finish (repurposed prototypes and injuries included). overall, i'm extremely pleased it how it turned out!!

this was a full fabric, square-backed case binding with a peek through cover showcasing a heat transfer foiled title on the (red, burgundy, gold) endsheet (and a hidden katana design to match the charm). things got a bit weird near the spine because i didnt anticipate my glue acting funky under the heat, but live and learn! the outside covers turned out plenty clean.

the edges are painted with matte black acrylic and sealed with beeswax, and the bookmark is a little 4mm burgundy silk number tipped with a gold clasp and katana charm (of course). the silk is very thin/fragile, so in the future i think ill double the length i use.

i also had a great time typesetting this! when i first read this i knew i wanted to do something that was both angular/modern and ornately victorian (with a red, black, gold scheme). this had to be decadent and beautifully clash-y, because nothing less would suffice for the kind of author who'd use a verse from the canticle of canticles as the summary for a fic series like this. truly iconic. nerds will notice that this is a little visually reversed from the way books are traditionally typeset, which is also intentional. i think it fits the vibe of the bind and the fic. i hope the vision came through.

this was actually the second case i built; i wasnt happy with the first one so i ripped it up and made a notebook (with the front and back covers) and bookmark (from the spine) for dani, which was a fun little experiment. i just... didnt take any pictures, apparently?

overall this was a really fun and challenging project, and i cant believe its done!!!! wow!!!

#GAHHHHHHHHHHHH THIS TYPESET!!!!! #THIS CASE DESIGN!!! #i am drooling #this is GORGEOUS #you should be so pleased with how this came out #it's amazing!!! #love the cutouts on the cover #love the use of lighter gray #for some of the beautiful images #blend of modern and victorian very achieved!!! #also i DO really love the black line cutting across the quote/chapter title and the end page #again GORGEOUS! #and the edges #wahhhhhhhhh i can't sing this bind's praises enough #not my bookbinding

[mahoganydoodles]

i keep a messy desk (x)

#omg BEAUTIFUL cover #love that shade of red too #so natural AND vibrant at the same time :) #not my bookbinding

[mahoganydoodles]

I loved the way @nevermordor writes Luffy's asexuality, so I collected some of their Zoro/Luffy fics into this little A6.

🖤 The cover features this Asexual Pride Sky print by kingpains,

🤍 I've wanted to do pride flag endbands, and here they are!

💜 I really really love using BlackFlag font for One Piece fics, so this is not the last one it's feaured in one of my typesets!

#WOW using the flag colors as the headband is brilliant!! #Also beautiful cover love how it fits the color scheme #And the font!!!! #not my bookbinding

[mahoganydoodles]

It's not glued in yet and the cover has some smudges on it and I need to try my possible solution to the bending I'm seeing with the bookboard, but I love how the cover for this sketchbook looks! 😊😍

[mahoganydoodles]

Frigid by Guede

This story has a delicious dark fairy tale vibe. It's something I'll very much enjoy rereading on a cold winter evening.

❄️ Lovingly waxed the hell out of the covers, so they have a nice subtle sheen;

❄️ Really happy with this title page, I cleaned up an illustration from The Pacific tourist (1876) for it;

❄️ I knew from the start I wanted some fancy drop caps, and imagine my delight when I found that the author uses a letter form Goudy Initialen font as a userpic! Of course I went with it as a little easter egg!

❄️ For the endpapers I went for a dramatic red acrylic splatter over very textured paper for that blood on snow feel, because I can't resist being a bit cheeky;

❄️ And to complete the overall winter theme I painted the edges a fun glittery silver.

#love the way the bookcloth of the spine blends in to the forest scene and looks like a tree #and the blood splatter?? #BEAUTIFUL! #not my bookbinding

[mahoganydoodles]

This is ABSURD levels of talent!! I LOVE LOVE the designs of tom and greg and I cannot believe that is hand cut, rearranged, and then copied and on top of that SCREENPRINTED???

Also the yellow and pink on the book cloth?? the matching hand-marbled paper?? The text design on the cover and the formatting of the SCENE INTRODUCTION at the start of chapter 1 which reminds me so much of a script??

WOW I can't get over this. INCREDIBLE

Kill the Director by erikschampion

My part in a gift exchange taking place in Renegade's California satellite server. This was a lot of fun and very experimental for me. My idea was to pursue something a little grunge, a little smudged, to go along with the early 2000s Brit punk vibe that the fic gets its title from. Spray paint, screen printing, some blood, some tears, and it's to its new home. Glamour and process shots under the cut!

The yellow base is a plain linen bookcloth that's been coated with acrylic. The pink accent color is a combo of spray paint and smudges of pink Golden Fluid acrylic paint. The endbands are sewn with Gutermann polyester florescent sewing thread, and the endpages are my attempt at an italian vein marble with pink, yellow, and black paint.

Some shots of the typesetting, and a video showing the book as a whole. The fic has some exposition written in a script format, so I typeset that to reflect. And it's always fun to include text message bubbles and emails and stuff.

The graphics on the case were done with screens and waterbased screen printing ink! I went through a few iterations and even tried to set my kitchen on fire in order to get it right before settling on the screens. I'm very very pleased with the result. (The fire was from my DIY attempt at making my own gelli plate with gelatin, glycerin, and rubbing alcohol. All the instructions were telling me to be careful about how many bubbles I was stirring into the mix but I was like, it'll be fine. I'll use my heatgun or a lighter to pop whatever bubbles are there. It works with resin so it should here. Yall alcohol is flammable lmao. Why did I do that. I put my lighter up to those bubbles and lost my vision for a moment at the flash of light. I've never done something that stupid)

The freshly marbled paper hanging up to dry in my kitchen; the screen for the front of the case; my practice piece including the spine design; the case drying on my shower rod (along with some pieces of fabric for another project lol). I have fewer process pictures than I thought lol.

The graphics on the front and back were also partially designed by hand. I printed images of the characters then cut them vertically, and alternated the slices. Copied that, then did the same horizontally. Scanned that, and then did some cleaning up digitally on my computer. Here's some shots of the steps and the pieces themselves.

The third picture shows my first attempt, as I actually did this process twice. The first time I didn't feel like the first pass was pixelated enough, so I cut it again both vertically and horizontally and alternated them once more. This was a mess, and ultimately I didn't like the finished result. Round two (second image) was the final round, and what wound up using in the project instead.

Thanks for looking!

#my jaw is still dropped looking at this #CUTTING THE IMAGES AND THEN REARRANGING THEM MANUALLY AND COPYING THEM?? #inspired. truly #not my bookbinding

[mahoganydoodles]

Carnet horizontal rouge-gorge 🐦

Find me on Ko-Fi : https://ko-fi.com/anatolejolly

#omg the BIRDS #the CORK #this is so cute and sweet #love the bird pattern #not my bookbinding