Currently crafting...

[ehyde]

I took a few weeks off from bookbinding to make sure I'd have enough time to finish Halloween costumes, but those are done now and I am free to return to books!

I signed up for renegadepublishing's winter exchange (essentially a secret santa), both the typesetting and the binding exchange. I can't say what they are but I'm almost done typesetting the first of them and I bought some cover paper for it today.

The other project that has a winter deadline isn't fanfic, but rather a collection of my granddad's letters from WWII that I'm typesetting and binding for my dad for Christmas. They're really interesting to read--not so much from a "military history" perspective; but more the mundane aspects of that period. Granddad had spent his whole life up till then in rural Oregon--he saw a lot more of the world than he probably ever would have, otherwise (and met my grandma, too).

I bought paper for the endpapers today, too--a marbled paper with a bit of an old-fashioned feel. I'll use an army green cloth for the cover (the red paper here is for the exchange fic).

Comments

[xmarksthespotwhereistand]

Secret projects, that's so exciting! With a hint of red paper.
It's so good that once we start bookbinding, we'll be able to do these other personal projects, too.

[stultiloquentia]

What a neat project. The paper seems perfect for it.

You're giving me ideas... My family, too, has a couple really cool early 20th century diaries floating around.

[ehyde]

Fortunately the hardest/most tedious part had already been taken care of for me, and I only have to format the letters, not actually typing. Hopefully if you take on those projects you'll find a way around that part too!

[sunshine304]

I really love the idea for your father's Christmas present! I think the paper will go really well with olive green so that it fits the theme but isn't too army.

I want to make a book for a friend, though it's going slow as the text file I've got has lots of mistakes in it. Pondering whether to try and convert a pdf file of it (it's a public domain novel) but I've had problems with that in the past. *sigh* But I'm not in a great headspace for it rn anyway, so it'll have to wait a bit longer.

[ehyde]

If it's a public domain novel, are there any free epubs available? Those are a lot easier to work with than pdf. Good luck!

[sunshine304]

Oh that's a good idea! I never work with epub because I don't have an ebook reader, so I usually forget this format exists. XD I do have calibre, so converting it should work fine then. Thank you!