antuhsa | Snowflake Challenges 7 and 8 (Reply)

Day 7: Promote/Rec/Sing the praises of yourself

I'm pretty creative. I'm good at coming up with unique ideas and thinking out of the box, and I'm proud of that.
I'm proud of being able to say out loud that I think of myself as being creative. It feels like a big victory to finally be able to look myself in the eye and state it as a simple fact without adding 'yes, but...' to it.
I'm proud that I took the leap to combine bookbinding with fandom, even though it was scary and nerve-wracking. It was scary to share something that's such a big part of my offline life with an online audience. It was scary to have a writer trust me to turn their fic into something beautiful, when I didn't feel I deserved that trust yet. It was scary to submit my work to a big fest without knowing whether people would even want to see something like it. In hindsight those fears seem a bit silly, but at the time they were very real. Regardless, I only know they're silly now because I pushed through them, made the book and submitted it. I'm proud of myself for having done so.

Day 8: Rec at least three fanworks you didn't create

Love this challenge! I've already see a few wonderful recs on my flists which I'm excited about reading. They were all fics, however, so I'm going to give the arts and crafts corner of fandom some love!

The Key by

acid . These are some beautifully crafted pieces of jewellery, made for the Snarry Games many years ago. They are little clay sculptures made on top of antique keys, which was a wonderful idea. I love the pieces themselves, but also the way they are presented. Because of the text and the cohesive background and colour scheme on all the photo's, the entry as a whole has become a story, rather than merely a presentation of three beautiful keys. Love it!

I can't do fanart recs without mentioning John 'n Mary, who skyrocketed to the top of my list of favourite fanartists as soon as I found her work. Her style is very whimsical and pleasing to the eye. Her whole DeviantArt gallery is stunning, not just the fannish side of it, but I'm still going to focus this rec on Ars Fatorum, one of her fanart pieces. It's an illustration for a fic I've yet to read, so it's a huge compliment to the artist that the drawing can stand on its own. The piece just speaks to me on so many levels. It's technically well-done, but also imaginative, and seems to be inspired by the work of one of my favourite Medieval artists: Jheronymus Bosch. It's detailed enough that you can stare at it for a while, but not so much that it becomes tiresome to look at. I bet it also complements the fic it was drawn for very well, but I can't say that yet. I just hope everyone else will enjoy the drawing as much as I do!

And the last one is something I've already recced on my journal a few months ago, but with all my talk about bookbinding in this challenge, it feels fitting to rec it again: Snarry Notebook by Vanyanie. As the name implies, it's a notebook inspired by the Harry/Snape ship. Since it's a notebook, the pages are blank, but the outside more than makes up for it! The book is a casebinding with green leather on the spine and art by a few Snarry fanartists on the outside and endpages. Love the handmade endbands in contrasting red.The embossing and quote on the spine also look great. I love the bright colours and how the bookbinder just went for it. My Snarry books are always a bit ambiguous; they could be Snarry or they could not. But with this notebook there's no mistaking!