[Note: this project was completed in June 2022.]

The entire concept of this book changed about five times before I settled on something… and the only reason I settled on the final design was because I found that lizard-scale paper while digging through a flat file at the Chicago Dick Blick’s with a friend. She got to see me rework the whole design in real time as I flung paper around and chattered about what I could do with it. One of the stories features dragon riders – how could I NOT use lizard-scale paper?

(As always: texture, my beloved!!)

Because the book includes two stories, I used Duo cloth (since discontinued, though with the help of the Renegade server I’m soon gonna have a hoard to rival Smaug), which is woven so it changes color depending on which way the light hits it. This was also the book where I finally figured out how to properly rig up my foil quill to my Silhouette cutter! Here’s a good shot of how the early experiments went (first attempt on the left, second attempt on the right):

Foiling embellishments onto bookcloth is so much crisper than inking them, and I look forward to doing this kind of thing more in future projects.

A huge thank-you to @winterofherdiscontent as well for letting me include their art:

The included fics are “Ember Burning” and “Lovely Demons” – be sure to give them a read!