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kulapti · 8 months

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Cover construction for The silent isle imbowers, July-Aug 2023.

Finished binding here.

Materials shown: metallic gold and matte black heat transfer vinyl with cricut-cut designs, cricut-cut paper stencil, acrylic paint, bookcloth made of cotton + drawing paper backing + Lineco PVA glue. Calligraphy by quillingwords, flower art and cover construction by me.

————-General tips on how to make smth like this:

Steps in order were (1) have bookcloth, (2) cut and paint stencil, (3) cut and weed both HTV layers, (4) apply black HTV, (5) apply gold HTV, (6) add paint detail with paintbrush over the vinyl, (7) apply bookcloth to cover board.

This is not a beginner-friendly design LOL. Be like me and try most of the steps by themselves on other projects first.

I drew this design knowing how the sections would be layered, and which materials (and therefore colors) would go with each layer. Achieving a similar result with a premade design will likely require editing in a digital art program.

Test how your materials will layer before committing to a complex design. In this case I discovered that the type of bookcloth I made actually helps conceal the adhesive spread under the black HTV.

Layering HTV over small sections of acrylic paint works! Cannot confirm the result if you were to use large painted sections.

PSA This black layer with many very small pointy bits is at the extreme limit of what I think is possible to weed from machine-cut HTV. A different material might work better, and I got a lot faster at weeding the second copy than the first one, but some of this is just a technical limit. The gold section worked great but I would not recommend this for the black.

Layering HTV is much easier to do uniformly with a heat press! Check if your local library or maybe an art class studio has one you can use before doing smth like this with your iron.

Paper stencils are easy to make with the cricut but don’t try to use them for anything with small details. The above example is pushing it despite being very simple shapes. Stick-on stencils are better.

Tiny HTV design tip: designs with jagged sections and very thin lines are hardest to weed successfully. Smooth curves are much easier.

Scale all pieces of a stacked design on the same drawing program and within the same canvas in cricut so they layer precisely.

Cut tiny HTV designs with the washi paper setting on a cricut. I did not find this out myself but I can confirm the results! Using the HTV setting will cause the blade to catch on and pull up small sections of the design while cutting, ruining parts of the design.

—————-Tiny HTV design weeding tips:

For the love of cheese do not try anything this complicated the first time you use a cricut. or the second. you will cry

Seriously consider trying both HTV and cricut stencils before doing anything complicated like this. I wish I had at least attempted the black layer as a stick-on stencil.

This isn't a weeding tip but again you better cut this with a washi setting.

Use a very sharp weeding tool, good lighting, and consider a magnifying glass

Be prepared for this to take several hours, especially if you have never done a tiny piece before.

Important! The cricut does not perfectly cut out designs, leaving very small connected sections around the design at various locations. This is almost unnoticeable on large designs but can ruin tiny designs very easily. Be prepared to hold down the “keep” sections of the design with tweezers or a fingertip while pulling or trimming off some of the “remove” negative space.

Do NOT attempt to pull off all the negative space in a single piece. Either add dividing lines to your design for the machine to cut, or use a sharp tool to scrape them yourself. You are much less likely to accidentally remove part of your design if you weed the design in distinct sections.

#my art #bookbinding #work in progress #fanbinding #art tips #artists on tumblr #here there be fandom #long post #weeding the black layer was so. lol. I started the first one and was like I may have made a terrible mistake #renegade chat lighting candles for me #worth it!! also would hopefully come up with a more efficient stencil strategy instead next time!!#I normally post wip stuff on my side blog but figured this might be worth going on main #also the first wip photo looks neat so #only the vision of this fic being a Really Hecking Badass Book could sustain me thru 12 hours of weeding those black layers #my Learn Bookbinding Skills strategy is basically to choose an extremely ambitious project that excites me enough to keep me motivated #and then to just work on it for months because I am stubborn as all hell and genuinely find this fun instead of frustrating :D #tailfeather binding #id in alt text #described #update I have added ids!

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lemonysnicket · 10 months

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adventures in bookbinding: making the negret colophon playing card book!

it's diy girl summer and i am Bored. time to attempt a completely new craft with zero research except for like. 3 youtube videos!

so, to start off, i suppose i will ramble a wee bit about my plans/goals/reasoning. truth be told, i just really really like my blorbo who book binds and i think it would be very fun to become Just like him for real. therefore we will be embarking on a journey!! to become my blorbo and also find something crafty to do today. quick psa that this is not a real tutorial because i have absolutely zero experience, but more of a general guide and/or craft with me! let's do this in sectionssss!!

1 - the plan!!

so for my first bookbinding project we are going to do something small, starting out by being silly and taking a page (lol) out of negret colophon's book (lol....) when he makes a tiny book and uses two playing cards as the covers. this will give me a little tiny trial run so i can learn the basic skills and use easily available materials around my house!! afterwards i think i'll sketch out a more ambitious journal idea - i have lots of fabric lying around that would work perfectly to cover a cardboard cover. wow, that's wordy! so! without further ado let's begin :) negret's little bookbinding project is described in the first chapter of raconteurs in this little excerpt here.

seems simple enough!! also the absolute perfect beginner project. it is tiny and the materials consist of Literally Anything. let's get groovy!!

2. materials!!

here's what we're working with:

playing cards! i found a deck lying around in a random drawer somewhere and chances are you have one laying around too. i chose the ace of spades and diamonds, because the text specifies a pair of aces but i couldn't find a matching pair, lol. i was also very tempted to choose one of the king cards as an homage to maisie's story later on (and because the king cards are absolutely gorgeous and detailed) but we're sticking to canon right now. we'll use the other cards for a future project.

needles!! a lot of the tutorials i see use very big or thick needles but i don't have those and this is also a very small project, not a huge journal, so any can work.

thread!! use whatever color you would like! at this point i was very indecisive because i have a lot of options and they're all quite pretty colors, but i settled on red later.

an assortment of papers!! use literally whatever you have lying around. for me, i managed to dig up the one scrap of newspaper in my house, since that's specifically listed, but most of my pages were from a book i sacrificed for an old art project, magazines and flyers, a lot of which were college mail because we're at that point in my life, lol. this is a recycling sort of project. choose anything! the more variety the better :)

i didn't display these in the photo, but if you have an awl, use an awl! i do not have one so i improvised, which i'll elaborate upon later. also, scissors! to cut the pages to scale. a ruler also came in handy :)

alright, now that we have all our tools in order, it's time to get into it :)

3. creating the pages!!

our first step is to measure our playing cards! you might not have to do this step because i'm fairly certain most cards are uniform in size/make, but check just in case, lol.

my cards measured to be 2.5" wide and 3.5" tall. i am no mathematician but using my singular brain cell i deduced that the papers should be twice the width of our cover, since those will fold to be the same size. so, using my Expert calculations, i made a little template cut from an index card measuring 3.5" x 5".

now we get to cutting!! using your various materials, cut out a bunch of papers to the size of your template. i just cut around it because i could not be bothered enough to waste time tracing, lol. i didn't go in with a plan, but i cut 16 papers to this size, which ended up being perfect. here are all my pages !! look at all the colors and textures!! the fun thing about the project being so small is that you can specifically cut the pages as the most interesting photos or sections, or you can even do it at angles too. as long as it ends up the right size, anything is fair game

now, we're going to make the papers into signatures! i just learned this word today lol. essentially, we will be grouping our papers and then folding those in half to become little mini books/pages. since i had 16 papers, i made 4 signatures with 4 pages each.

at this point i was tempted to go cut up more and make a fifth signature, but i decided against it since i didn't want the book to become too thick, and 4 sets with 4 papers each ended up being just about right. one of the tutorials i watched suggested that you group your signatures with paperclips or bobby pins, and at the time i waved off the suggestion but i totally agree now. i didn't have any clips to work with and i managed fine without them, but it definitely would have been easier if i had. so if you have them, use them! it'll make your life better lol. at this point you can stack your signatures together and itll look like a book!

oh yeah now we're cooking!!

4. preparing for binding!!

it was at this point in the process where i ventured out from knowing what i was doing to completely balling, but everything turned out okay and i'll walk you through it! our next step is to create the holes with which we will sew our signatures together. we're going to mark those off. once again i have zero clue how to do math but i managed to use my giant incredible smooth brain one more time to mark my template with a few equidistant points with which we can mark our signatures.

in case it's not clear, i kind of just counted the lines and then had to look up how much that was, but you can also just eyeball it if you're good enough. side note, i added two more holes after this, with one just below the very top and one just below the very bottom.

pardon my very unsightly nails, lol - here's how i used my template to mark the very center of each of my signature. you'll want to mark the point on the center line where you folded it while keeping the pages of each signature together. HOPEFULLY WITH A PAPERCLIP. and without further ado it's time for the stabbing!

now...here's where i got a little bit sacrilegious. you'll recall that earlier i mentioned how i don't have an awl in my possession yet? well, i managed to improvise a solution...

yes that is a sewing pin. IN MY DEFENSE it's all i had, and functionally it's basically the same as an awl! just on a much smaller scale. it worked out though - i imagine that if i'd been using thicker paper it would have posed a bit of a problem but for this project specifically, it was fine. do not kill me book binders. now it's time to get serious...

5. the binding

everyone stay calm! stay calm! it will be okay. i was lowkey intimidated by this part as this was Truly out of my depth of expertise, but i promise it's not that complicated. you're going to get your needle and thread now - i settled upon this gorgeous red color because it contrasted nicely with the playing cards, and there really wasn't much red in the papers i chose.

gorgeous!! tbh i always knew i'd go with the red because i've always envisioned the book with red thread anyways. like come on look at my very first drawing of negret WITH it. literally the exact same materials. i simply had to.

okay. now to the binding part. i don't have any real photos or insights or instructions for this whole stage because 1. i was deep in focus mode and 2. entirely relied on a tutorial for this part. here's the tutorial i used - massive shoutout to this lovely lady ! my spine didn't turn out nearly as neat as hers because i did not properly follow directions for the first bunch of knots (and i had to kind of improvise with the cover) but here's how it turned out!

not too bad for my first book, lol. try not to stress out about it being perfect because this book is not supposed to be perfect! the imperfections give it character. worst case scenario, if you really mess up, your eclectic book is just a little more eclectic than intended. and that's never a crime :)

now the one problem i had to figure out on my own was how to attach the covers, since most tutorials explain how to attach actual big separate covers and not - essentially paper. i ended up just... attaching them as if they were another page or signature to the front and back. my holes on the covers were a few millimeters away from the edge, though, since there's no crease or fold to align them with. what i did was essentially do the first knots/stitching on the signature like the tutorial said, but for each hole i sewed through in the first/last signature, i also made an additional loop through the adjacent hole on the cover. you can kind of see how i passed my needle through like instructed and then took a little extra detour to stitch the card as well. in some places i ended up making new holes in the signature too that were closer to where the cards' holes lined up?? try not to do that but it worked and it looks fine so really whatever makes it attach and hold is perfect.

6. bask in your glory!!!

aaaand that's it!! you did it!! this was a ton of fun to work on and i absolutely loved making this little adventure into a new craft with something so near and dear to my heart. if you make one please be sure to tag me!! i would love love LOVE to see :) here's an additional picture of my little monster (+ next to the legend himself. art credit to me lol. look the books are twinning!!)

#the raconteurs commonplace book #raconteurs commonplace book #green glass house #nagspeake #roaming world #uhhhh #bookbinding #book binding #genuinely i dont know if those are separate words or not. either way LDJKGLHSDJG #crafts #crafting #arts and crafts #yippee this was actually so much fun #to quote alex of vfdiscord fame “the self blorbofication of quill”#it's too late i'm in too deep i'm literally him now #quill crafts

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thefourofdiamondsart · 1 year

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restoring strahd’s diary

#addersmire aquired this at a suspicious price so our curse of strahd group could make fun of the incredibly camp writing #strahd von zarovich #curse of strahd #book art #book arts #dungeons and dragons #book restoration #process video #book binding #dnd #i strahd #I’ll post some still pictures of the final later #cos #my deepest apologies for the *nstagram formatting #thefourofdiamondsart

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teledild0nix · 5 months

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okay i finished a power unbound on the plane and i don't think i quite get the drarry coding that you do (tbh i just really loved all the intricate dynamics too much to compare them, they were SUCH a fascinating relationship and did not go how i expected them to at all!!! i am famously Not a romance reader and was still way more invested in jack and alan than the actual overarching plot lol, it was very odd for me) HOWEVER...i am shocked i've never encountered their safe word system in drarry fic before because it would work so well for them lol

AH! I loved that book I'm so glad you enjoyed it too!!! I don't see Jack as being like Draco or Alan as being like Harry. I just think their dynamic (esp their sexual dynamic) as being kind of aspirational to capture for a lot of drarry writers. Their safeword system being an EXCELLENT example. Maybe their enemies to lovers journey as well.

#a power unbound #the last binding #those books are so much fun #fun fact i forgot the sex scenes are Like That in this series #and i was shopping at target while listening on my ear buds when the first sex scene in apu came up #i nearly Passed Away #anyway i want to start over again from the beginning i love this series #i love what it does with magic and i love the characters #also like Addy being ace? i don't think i've ever seen a character actually like talk about being ace?#and she does it without sounding all modern and online about it too

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ifyoucandaniel · 1 year

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Also I picked up bookbinding just so I could bind all of zars fics and Now that CR is officially almost over that means I have to finish the books and it’s making me anxious and not in a fun way 😭

#book binding is a lot harder than I thought and so is HTV #did you know that crimson rivers in physical form is like…. 5 books #she’s fucking massive #i love a thicc bitch tho so <3 #also I didn’t realize typesetting could be both fun and the bane of my existence #WHY IS IT SO HARD #fic: crimson rivers #book binding #fanfic binding #crimson rivers

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thebraxiatelcollection · 10 months

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The sudden urge to pick up bookbinding as a hobby, if only to store pretty fanfics on my shelves.

#about me #ive even joined a book binding group and i admire those people who have the skills #sadly i lack the computer and space to do it lol #maybe when i invested in a new computer maybe...#book binding seems so much fun to do

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incognetomisquito · 10 months

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I DID IT

I forgor to update after the fabric dried BUT I WAS SO FRIGGIN EXCITED

This is my binding of @sarah-sandwich’s spideypool fanfiction: Paradise (spread out with a butter knife)

Red endpages, handstitched binding, handstitched black headbands. And stained denim cover.

NOW

the COVER is hand dyed with beetroot dye (first time ever making dye) and its bc theres a VERY IMPORTANT scene in the book involving accidental red dye. Sorry, Petey, I know you said purple is hawkeyes color, but it felt fitting to dye smth blue.

(The fabric is actually insideout bc the way i dyed the fabric made the inside more prominent than the outside. Whoops XD )

The whole theme of this is basically as cobbled together as possible, because Spidey is broke (and its my first project) the fabric was a sleeve from when i made my battle vest, i used a spoon instead of a bonefolder, the headband thread i just HAPPENED TO HAVE bc I bought embroidery pearl once bc they were out of black floss, and it’s apparently perfect for headbands??? Who knew!

(Thats why i used beetroot dye. I coulda bought some at the art store, but it wasnt in the spirit)

So I had fun overthinking this! Sue me! (Please please don’t sue me, I cannot afford the legal fees)

Anyway that concludes my book binding journey, thank u and good night

#(book) binding journey #also the sue me is a reference to the fic bc im a nerd >:3 #god this was so much fun

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ladeedayda · 1 year

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I really like TCF, and I'm interested in book binding. So of course I was curious how much "book" would be needed to adapt the whole LN. I knew it was really long, so it'd take a couple big ones to include everything. Then I did some quick calculations and um. Uh. Well, here's a little math:

50k words at the minimum comfortable size and font comes out to approximately 100 pages. The average "largest" size books contains ~600 pages (at minimum size). That being said, it would kill me to read such tiny text for very long. Realistically, a comfortable font size (for me) would be 350 per page at most, so I'll be using that number moving on.

With that in mind, some of the more popular large book series like Eragon (906k total words, largest book having 280k words or 880 (803) pages) and Harry Potter (1M 84k total, largest having 257k or 870 (735) pages).

TCF has approximately 2M 150k words, 776 chapters. In part one. Ok, so... 2,150,000 words, with 1 page being ~350 words... that's 6143 pages. And if we gave each title in the series ~800 pages each, that's still 8 GIGANTIC books. TL;DR:

Eight books, 350 words per page, 800 pages each.

For reference, here's the A Song of Ice and Fire series, 1M 770k words, 4.2k pages (~400 words per page), 5 books total (~840 pages per book).

THAT'S A LOT OF BOOK.

#the trash of the count's family #Sorry the example image has like 10 pixels total LMAO #I was legitimately excited to try and make the series into a legit book that I could hold and show off #But THAT'S A LOT OF BOOK. WOW.#I don't have the patience to bind that many pages #For fun I looked up how long the average reader would take to read 2M words and uh #At average reading speed (300 wpm) it would take you 110 hours minimum. 95 if you're a fast reader (350 wpm)#If you were read for a solid 3 hours every single day it would still take you 32-37 days #If you were insane and burnout wasn't a problem you could read it in 19-22 days at 5 hrs a day #More fun numbers: avg words per chap for TCF is ~2.8k #I don't have that much time so I read about 400 chapters over the course of 1.5 months. That's abt 1.5 hrs of reading a day #Look at me being all healthy and stuff #Ahem. Anyways. I like numbers

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