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Why Inkjet Paper Curls

Printed pages from inkjet printers tends to curl up over time. Researchers found that this long-term curl correlates with the migration of glycerol – one of the solvents used in inkjet ink – through the paper’s fiber layers toward the unprinted side.  (Image credit: Lunghammer - TU Graz; research credit: A. Maass and U. Hirn; via Physics World) Read the full article

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Ants on the ground and a spider in a web. The Earth and Living Things. 1932.

 Internet Archive

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rebinding: valdemar. (books that blooded me)

i'm still practicing my case binding and struggling but im genuinely pleased with this series of paperback rebinds. collected from a couple of library sales over the past many years (i still have my original hardcovers, too), i've taken a near-complete set of mercedes lackey's valdemar series and begun rebinding them as hardcover for a binderary project.

this is a basic flatback style. i stripped the paper covers, added mull and endbands to the spines, tipped on endpapers, and created cases for each book. the series is divided up into (mostly) trilogies so i set on a spine color for each trilogy. i chose a single font for the decorations and i scanned the paper covers to preserve the classic 90s jodi lee artwork. the artwork was printed on iridescent sticker paper and attached to the covers a paper well technique from DAS bookbinding. on the back of each book is a small sigil i designed for the main character(s) of each series.

i'm about halfway through. wish me luck!!

**i say 'books that blooded me' in the spirit of a devoted fated mates podcast listener. a lot of mercedes lackey has not aged well--the larry dixon of it all is A Problem--but these books installed a lot of buttons in me and i still love them. there is a simplicity and sense of joy i get from reading them--still.

#other people's books #I love these so much

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Binderary: On Her Undying Majesty's Secret Service

I will take every opportunity to hype up this fic, because it has been one of my favorites for years: On Her Undying Majesty's Secret Service by ImperialGirl. The possibilities for spy capers in the Girl Genius universe are vast and intriguing, and this story hits every note. It takes a fairly minor character and gives him a delightful secret life and a very sweet romance.

As a side note, the author also has a series of self-published books that I highly recommend. Check out her AO3 profile.

A book set in Paris, the jewel of Europa, needs an appropriately stylish covering. The paper here is actually wallpaper scraps I stole from the local high school theatre department (it was part of the set for a Sherlock Holmes play) - the pieces were no good for walls anymore, but they have a lovely texture and weight for books. The cloth is a graphite Books By Hand bookcloth, one of the last scraps of the first roll of bookcloth I ever bought.

The spine title is gold Cricut HTV - I'm getting better at getting it on there straight.

The endpages are scrapbook paper I caught on clearance sale - I had no idea at the time what they were going to suit, but I knew I had to have them. I think they work fine with the era and the gaslamp fantasy look.

This book is quarto letter size - approximately 4.25" w x 5.5" h. It's not as thin as a lot of the books I make and has a nice weight to it.

The typeset is one of my favorites to date - the skinny dropped capitals really had that Girl Genius-era feel to me, and I don't usually use Garamond text, but it really does look luxurious in a larger font size.

Tell me this is not a sexy letter Q. I love every time one of these shows up.

ImperialGirl, if you happen to see this and would like a copy for yourself, it would be an honor to make you one. Please send me a message.

#binderary2024 #my binding

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hi! I've found this page not long ago and really love seeing ur bookbindings! Is there a favourite material u like using?

There are so many materials involved in bookbinding that's kind of a tricky question to answer! I'm guessing you might be asking specifically about covers but I'm going to be general.

I enjoy the block of beeswax I use for waxing my thread before sewing - I love that a little of the smell lingers on the book block, at least for a while.

I love the color of the cream printer paper - first the Staples brand legal paper (that I haven't been able to find anymore) and the Hammermill letter paper I use.

I'm really enjoying paste paper, now that I've learned how to make a paste that works well with it. I've only put it on a couple of books so far, but I'm excited to make more. (The green squiggles on my new log book in this post)

And for cloth most of what I have is Duo (still working through the quantity from the group buy and enjoying it all) and quilting cotton. They're both nice in their own ways. I am still excited every time I use the Skarabaus Duo with the purple/green shift, and I've barely touched my limited supplies of Dragonfly (blue/green, seen here) and Dusk (blue/black).

Thank you for enjoying my page! I'm definitely going to try to remember to post more pictures these days.

#ask response

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Binderary: The Blue Castle

This one isn't fanfiction, it's the novel The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery. I haven't actually read it yet, except for what I picked up while skimming through to fix hyphenation, so I'm really looking forward to sitting down with it and actually reading a novel I've bound myself.

This a quarto letter size book (pages are approximately 4.25"w x 7" h) on Quill cream legal paper. It's a little yellower than I like, but I'm still working my way through it.

It's sewn with just French Link stitching, no tapes, because it's really not all that long.

The endpapers are double-sided scrapbook cardstock (thin cardstock) from a packet I got at Joann's.

The cover cloth Duo bookcloth in the Dragonfly color - it's got a blue-green color shift depending on the angle you're looking at. The headbands are made from scraps of the same bookcloth. The cover paper is from a Pepin decorative paper book. The spine title is white Cricut HTV.

The spine has a little bit of an angle to it, but overall I'm very pleased with this book. It feels good, it looks good, and I can't wait to read it and put it on my shelf.

#binderary2024 #my binding #the blue castle

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a bind I did for the Renegade Bindery server exchange!! @amarguerite 's fic Five Times Frederick Wentworth Had the Breath Knocked Out of Him On the Ice (and one time he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding)

#I'm very excited to have this story in my hands #exchange books

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Marbled Monday Pattern Puzzler

There are three volumes to this late 18th century set of biblical criticism. Based on the similarities of the marbling patterns we wondered if the papers might have originated in the same sheet? Maybe not, but it was still fun to try to line up the patterns!

This set was owned by 19th century Unitarian minister and and scholar, Convers Francis.

Niemeyer, August Hermann. Charakteristick der Bibel. 5. Aufl. Halle : im allen soliden Buschhandlungen, [1794-95].

#paper patterns

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Some copyright-free vintage panels.

Transparent versions can be downloaded here!

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It's been a while since I've posted any books - I really need to learn how to take better pictures - but now that it's February again, that means Binderary! And this year my slate isn't entirely gifts for other people, so I can share pictures.

So here are my first three books of the month.

Pamphlet binds: Noble (includes the sequel Arrangement) and The Road Not Taken (includes What Might Have Been). Both my own AnS fanfic.

My excitement with these is the fact I managed to get the adhesive vinyl titles on without tearing up the covers. I've learned new skills since a year ago!

Book 3 is my first case bind of the month - a new bindery log. I keep a record of every book I make, with measurements and materials and notes.

The fabric is Skarabaus Duo, bought as part of a crazy group buy last year. This color-shifting bookcloth was discontinued by the manufacturer, and we bought a really impressive amount of what was left. I love this color in particular - it's purple from certain angles.

The paper is paste paper I made myself with acrylic paint and starch paste and a little comb made out of cardboard. It's a ridiculous amount of fun, and I have a few more bits of it I'll be using later in the month.

The endpapers are scrapbooking card stock, and the endbands are made from bookcloth scraps folded over twine.

I'm starting my third year as a bookbinder and I love this art more and more all the time.

#binderary2024

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If Living Can Be This (MDZS)

If you asked me last year, after having bound a MDZS fic without knowing anything about the show/books, whether I would go ride or die for the fated main pairing with decades of pining, or a poly trio featuring a sadistic mass murderer and the two people he tortured the most, well... you can guess what I would have answered. But within a week after finishing CQL, I blithely ignored all the WWX/LWJ fic recs people had lovingly curated for me and instead read every single Yi City trio I could possibly find.

While there are many, MANY righteous sandwich fics near and dear to my heart, the one I keep coming back to is If Living Can Be This by @veliseraptor. She took those glimpses at what Xue Yang could have been and shifted the story just a little to the left and looked at how the Yi City arc could have gone in a very, very different direction, and all without "redeeming" Xue Yang or ignoring how dangerous he was and still is.

So when I got wind that @misanthropiczombie had requested it for this year's Renegade Exchange, I engineered my way into being her giftee (ie, begged the mods).

This is a chonker of a series; while the main story is around 74k words, with the sequels it was about 180k, which translated to 572 pages! Originally I was going to do a typical rounded andbacked cased-in binding, but then a fellow Renegadee mentioned springback designs, which have a "spring" mechanism that forces the book to lay very flat when open. For such a big book that is unlikely to be read while lying down in bed (I mean, do what you want but I am not responsible for broken noses), this seemed like a GREAT time to learn an entirely new binding technique in less than a month. :D But as you can see, it lays VERY flat.

This is also the most complex cover design I've done so far - I used a vine motif for the typeset and wanted to emulate that in the cover, so after consulting with @celestial-sphere-press on her river bind cover, I cut out pieces of cover board for a moderately difficult onlay design.

I went with black and gold as the overall theme and also did some suminagashi for the edges to match the marbled endpapers and because It's What Xue Yang Deserves. At the same time, the book cloth is very nubby and textured to reflect the austere life they're living in Yi City at that point.

Because there clearly wasn't enough gold in this book, I added a fibrous gold flysheet to partly obscure the title page.

In one of the additional stories, Song Lan compares Xue Yang to a strangling vine that is aware that it could be ripped out at any moment. I used that as inspiration for the title and chapter ornaments. The text dividers are Jiangzai's hilt from CQL.

While the springback design was looooong, I did enjoy making it and may even do it again for mine and/or the author's copy! Or maybe I will cop out and just do rounded and backed cased in, we shall see. :D

Many, many thanks to the Renegade crew for supporting me during this bind. This one truly took a village and I would not have been able to do it without them!

#inspiration #and thank you for taking such detailed pictures

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Decorative Sunday: Paste Paper Edition

In 1942, Harvard University Press printed 250 copies of Decorated Book Papers: Being an Account of the Designs and Fashions by the bookbinder, author, and creator and collector of decorative papers, Rosamond Bowditch Loring. Published by the Harvard College Library Department of Printing and Graphic Arts in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the 234 sale copies of the first edition sold out within months, despite the “then considerable price of ten dollars” and the economic stressors of the war. In addition to eight plates reproducing examples of 18th century decorative papers, the first edition includes twenty-five samples tipped in, many of which are from the author’s own extensive collection. 

While Loring collected a variety of a decorative papers, the examples shown here are from the chapter on paste papers, Loring’s area of creative specialization. The sample papers included in this chapter are all Loring’s own work, or that of her student, Veronica Ruzicka, who bound the first edition (it is worthy to note that Ruzicka is the daughter of illustrator, wood engraver, and type designer Rudolph Ruzicka, whose work we have highlighted several times). Ruzicka also contributed an essay when a second edition of the book was finally published by Harvard University Press in 1952, along with Dard Hunter and Walter Muir Whitehall. 

Rosamond Loring (May 2, 1889 – September 17, 1950) studied book binding under Mary Crease Sears at the Sears School of Bookbinding in Boston. Sears, about a decade older than Loring, had had to battle to learn the trade; women were barred from the Bookbinders Union but most commercial binderies were happy to hire women for particular tasks, such as sewing sheets, but maintained a strict separation of roles, preventing employees from learning the whole binding process from start to finish. Eventually, Ms. Sears secured an apprenticeship in France to complete her studies and opened her binding school in Boston shortly after, training several generations of women binders. While studying under Sears, Loring became frustrated with the lack of options for quality endpapers and became determined to make her own, which she sold to other binders at Ms. Sears’s studio. Her first major commercial commission was for the Houghton Mifflin publication of The Antigone of Sophocles, translated by John J. Chapman (Boston, 1930).

Our copy of Decorated Book Papers is a gift of Dick Schoen. 

-Olivia Hickner, Special Collections Graduate Intern

#paste paper

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I made another book! This time I tried my hand at binding a copy of @marvinhere‘s tumblr folktales typeset. Endpapers were chosen because they kinda looked like that “do you love the color of the sky” post, and then I tipped them in upside down 🤦‍♀️ oh well, it’s not super noticeable

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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.

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A statement on ficbinding (according to me)

I've joined the book/ficbinding tag on tumblr a couple of weeks ago, and in that time I've seen some confusion and concern about what ficbinding is, so I thought I'd post a statement of how I see ficbinding and why I do it. (If you're an author and I redirected you to this post because I want to bind your fic, hiiii) (Fellow ficbinders, if you find this post a useful ressource, don't hesitate to use it yourselves)

What's ficbinding?

Ficbinding (also called fanbinding) means a reader is going to print your fic and make a book out of it. It goes from the simple single booklet stapled together to leatherbound gold-foiled volumes.

Are you gonna make money off of my writing?!

I wouldn't dream of it. Ficbinding is just another fandom practice: you can't monetize your fic writing because you don't own the universe you're writing about, and I can't monetize your fic because it doesn't belong to me. I believe there are professionals who bind fics for a price (on Etsy, maybe?) but I'm ethically opposed to it.

Why do you do it, then?

Love of the craft. I'm a craftsman, I love choosing the best fabrics, fonts and embellishments for a project and making something with my hands.

Love of your fic. I liked it so much I want it in my house! I'm not fond of reading on a screen, it drastically reduces the chances I'll re-read the fic (even if I want to). Printing your fic ensures I'll enjoy it for years to come. It's the best compliment I can pay you.

As a gift to a friend who doesn't have the skills.

And what, it happens whether I want it or not?

As you can imagine, this is kind of a gray area legally. Nothing forces a ficbinder to reach out and tell you they're binding your fic. But this is fandom, and I personally view it as a community and consider that it's only courteous to let authors know I'm doing this. If I post pictures of my binding here, I want to be able to give credit where it's due, and since most authors are very happy to see their work bound, tagging them means they'll get a nice surprise when they open tumblr. I'll always do my best to find a way to contact you (ao3 comment, tumblr if you've put it on your ao3 profile).

I don't like strangers messaging me, is there a way to let people I agree/don't allow this without talking to someone?

Valid, and there is! The simplest way is to write it in your ao3 bio, it's called a blanket permission or a transformative works statement. For example, mine says that I allow all transformative works (ficbinding is one, like fanart) based on my fics but that I like to be notified so I can gush about it and reblog/link to it, and I put my tumblr there to make it easy to contact me.

You can build a statement with this excellent tool. Answer the questions at the bottom of the page and you'll get a clearly-worded short statement to copy-paste into your bio (you can edit it, of course). The blanket permission is the thing ficbinders look for and as a digitally socially anxious person, let me tell you, it's a life-changer.

(Now, can I bind your fic, pretty please 🥺?)

#a really good summary of ficbinding #I agree on all points

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#MiniatureMonday

The Little Sand Crab/ By D'Ambrosio

The Little Sand Crab is an artist's book published in 1981 by The Compulsive Printer press. It was written, typeset, illustrated, designed, and bound by printer D'Ambrosio. The book is set in Bulmer, printed on Ingres Oyster paper, and stands at 74 mm tall. The cover is bound in red cloth and contains an openwork design of golden sun rays. UI Special Collections has copy no. 7 of a limited edition 85 copies. 

This warped Princess and the Frog type tale - but with a crab of course - D'Ambrosio himself describes to be "the story of how the greed of one lover can goad the other into committing uncharacteristic acts." 

--M Clark

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Making a hollow directly on the inner book

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