Bookbinding Project Updates! Ive Secured Some Decorative Papers For Endsheets And Covers, And Theyre

bookbinding project updates! i’ve secured some decorative papers for endsheets and covers, and they’re all sooo pretty. i may have gone a little overboard, but that simply means i have room for trial and error.

additionally—i managed to get my hands on quite a few educational resources from the library, and the best book i found was “Introduction to Bookbinding & Custom Cases: A Project Approach to Learning Traditional Methods” by Cindy and Tom Hollander. great explanations, clear pictures, instructions on how to mcgyver quite a few tools—and the best thing is that none of the projects require a sewing frame. if you’re looking for a good step by step beginner’s guide, that’s where you should go!

anyway! back to typesetting (:

I spent last night looking at Neocities sites and here are my takeaways:

There's a real push to keeping the internet weird, open and less corporate-driven -- info on bypassing paywalls, protecting your data, archiving web media and basic coding/tech literacy.

(I found one tutorial on how to make a pop up that detects whether someone has an ad blocker and suggests they install one if they don't! Love that.)

There's also resources on finding the kind of internet that isn't the default experience anymore - alternate search engines I hadn't even heard of, human-made link lists and webrings. (Webrings! Turns out they never went away!)

If any of that sounds interesting to you, by the way - sadgrl.online has a lot of it and is possibly the best thing on the internet????

The "90's web" aesthetic is really fun and nostalgic, but I particularly loved seeing some people bring the better parts of the "modern internet" into it. What if we had weird, eye-searing personal sites BUT with plaintext alternatives for accessibility purposes? CW for flashing lights and unreality triggers?

(Again sadgrl comes in with a lot of resources for making your website accessible.)

Most of all, I'm honestly emotional about all the sites I found that were like, "hi! I'm 14 and this is my website where I talk about stuff I like haha."

It's so good that so many kids and teens who never experienced the "old internet" are still finding stuff like this and making their own weird stuff! Not just because weird websites are more fun, but because these skills are being passed down.

Anyway it's great and who knows maybe I'll make my own site sometime to keep horror media recommendations or something.

First time using a French link stitch to sew the signatures together. I really like how secure it makes it all feel, especially since I didn't use tapes.

I used Sealemon's tutorial:

I didn't think to do this until after I'd punched the holes, otherwise I would have spaced them out more.

Hopefully I can get this glued together tonight, but as you can sort of see on my table, I'm working on a (garment) sewing project right now that's pretty thorny, so I may not get to it. It's okay. I'm happy as long as I'm making something.

Bookbinding resources masterpost!

Although I've only made one casebound so far, I've recieved multiple requests to make a tutorial. And well, I'm not that good. But I can share some of the online resources that have helped me.

• Youtube

DAS bookbinding - lots of bookmaking methods, explained in detail.

Annesi Bindings - mostly casebinding, and other useful things.

Dan Siebel's kettle stitch tutorial -short video on how to do a kettle stitch. Filmed up-close.

• Tumblr

Renegade Publishing - a group of independent fanbinders. They have a discord (though it's 18+) and answer binding related questions on the blog.

Armoredsuperheavy - founder of renegade publishing. Maintains multiple docs about the full process of making a book.

Hedgehog-moss's post about bookbinding - beginner information, links to resources

•Reddit

r/bookbinding - a large community of people. You can share your progress, ask questions. You may get criticism though. Expect brutal honesty.

•Other

Alternative bookbinding supplies - We don't all have the correct supplies lying around. It's fine.

How to: Headbands - article about sewing headbands.

Don't forget to use acid free materials! Acidic paper/glue decays with time, causing your book to turn yellow and fall apart. PVA and weath paste are commonly used adhesives.

I will update this as I find more sources! I'm still learning.

So imagine a DnD character who's whole motivation is 'X guy killed my parents and I need to find them' and the party just thinks 'ok, revenge quest, that's normal'

But when they finally find the guy the person with dead parents is just like "Hey buddy, long time no see. It's a shame we got separated, here's some money" and they're super chill.

The party is just confused and goes "Wait, why are you giving him gold?"

The guy just goes "Cause I owe him money?"

The party "But he killed your parents???"

"That's why I owe him money!"