We made this with sweaty hands! We breathed on this with our Mouths!

The assembling of HIVE FIVE:

So let's get this tour started...


The cover art was made by the amazing Megan Frauenhoffer and the book design by wunderkind Mark Leicht.

We bought the vellum in parent sheets then cut it down and print on it with a plain old printer. We tried to silk screen on the vellum but it never ended up being consistent enough to trust with a run of five hundred. Pretty expensive paper so we didn't want to be messing up every fifth one or so . . .

 

Then we bought the paper for the belly bands which fortunately was in a much better weight to be silk screened onto. We cut those parent sheets in half to handle better and got to screening. 

Britt Sabo (Top photo) and Myself (bottom photo) did all the silk screening for this edition

 

Then  I took the pages over to Open Book and rented studio time to cut them down on the guillotine 

Then I enlisted Curtis Briggs to try and help me fold the dust jackets. Originally I had the insane i dea that the jackets needed four folds. Two for the spine and one for each of the flaps. 

This made Curtis (pictured) swear a LOT and decide to never help me on another paper folding endeavor. It was pretty shitty guys the vellum was cracking (we were using rulers and bone folders) and it wasn't as easy as it would seem to get those spine folds perfect. But then  in a moment of despair I looked over at my bookshelf full of dustjacketed comics and realized I was an IDIOT. Nobody folds along the spine! You just make two folds for the flaps and let that tension hold the cover snug to the spine! FUCK! So I quickly made a little one sheet jig which was really just two lines where I needed to fold the book to get the best fit. So then that part of the book was smooth sailing....

The books on top of the jacket are just to hold it still while folding.


Next is the part that i am still toiling through and gives me bookmaking stress dreams  . . . the belly band. So I decided to use that super thin filmy double sided tape that STICKS TO EVERYTHING BUT WHAT YOU WANT IT TO because I am super smart. Honestly though glue takes too long and all the easier to use tapes just don't stick as well or aren't thin enough to not have the seam be super visible. So yeah . . .I'm still doing the next few steps ad infinitum  . . .

FINAL PRODUCT!

Totally worth it! Feel free to get your own here!