Branden's Rune Companion

 As promised, here is the book companion that goes along with the deer antler runes I made for Branden.  All of the information was hand written on cardstock.  The cover is plastic from old advertisements at Food Lion covered in a thick black fabric. 

The binding was the hardest thing to figure out.  I had the pages all written by the time his birthday came around, but no clue on how to bind it together.  I had a wonderful journal that I had bought from either Borders or Barnes&Noble that showed the stitching on the spine. I had really loved the way it looked and decided that's how I wanted to bind Branden's book...just to figure out how.  It took a slow-paced video on YouTube by an older gentleman that only spoke Italian to help me figure it out.  It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but I was able to use what he showed me and make up the rest as I went.  It's much easier than keeping all the page sets handy when he wants to do a casting!

It just took a quick drilling of holes into the plastic, poking holes through the folded paper with a thick needle, and a long strand of sinewette.   The actual binding didn't take that long, and was quite easy once I got a few passes down.  And it was a much cleaner process than worrying about binding glue!

The symbols on the front are done by hand as well, they're just the circle of runes and the symbol he uses as his signature.  I wouldn't mind doing another book like this.  I think next time, I'll just print off the pages rather than write all of them by hand.

Branden's Runes

Branden had been oogling rune sets for some time now.  My mother had sent me deer antlers, and while I'm not much for runes (I'm more of a tarot person) I really wanted to make him a set specifically for him. I tried to do as much research as I could with them.  Being as I don't follow much of the Asatru ways, I still wanted them to be as accurate as I could make them.

The bag is out of rabbit skin.  There's a little bit of fur still around the edges.  The antler beads on the toggles are smoothed and one has the image that he uses as a logo.

The skin was already tanned, so I didn't have to do much work on it to clean the fur off...thankfully.  I still plan on learning how to properly tan, but his bag, is not one of those projects.

All of the runes were ground with a dremel on the edges so they're nice and smooth when he reaches his hand in they're not going to slice his fingertips.  The rune symbols are burned into the slices of deer antler.  And let me tell you, burned deer antler smells horrible!  But the finished product is well worth it.

They were finished by his birthday last October, and while he hasn't consecrated them, he has quite a nice bond with them already.

And to add to my pride of these, I got to speak with some of the members of The Troth when vending at CNCPPD 2010.  I asked him to take a look at the runes I made to see if they were acceptable to Troth standards.  I also have done a book that I will post soon to go with them.  I am very pleased to say that both the runes and the accompanying book have received the Asatru stamp of approval!