Hello everyone!
Today I am bringing you my second Christmas DIY post and it is great for
giving to your friends or family and a little joke, or simply because it’s cool to store
things in books (I don’t know). It’s a book that’s been carved up, decorated a little
bit and filled with things you want to give to a certain person.
I did it for
my boyfriend last year (or the year before, I’m not sure), but I kind of made a
goof out of it, because it was actually a book on Madonna’s biography. Can
you imagine his face when he opened my present and saw Madonna’s face on the
front cover? Well, it was even better than that! I almost died laughing when I
saw him covering up disappointment and trying to look excited :D
But then he opened it and relief crossed his face :D We still laugh about it
to this day.
Let’s get started!
What will you need?
A book (I recommend getting a hard cover one, but I have a paper back and it
worked pretty well,
too) and you want it to be pretty thick one
(meaning a lot of pages)
A scalpel
A sponge
Some glue (again, like mod podge)
Some color of spray-paint
And I used some burlap, but it’s not in the picture
Also, I used some sand paper
First thing you’re going to want to do is decide how you want your edges to
be. I decided on about 2cm. You don’t want them to be too thin, because they
will break, or too thick, because you won’t have enough storage space.
Then you want to start cutting the pages and taking them out of the book. Be
careful that you cut across the same line all the time, so that the edges are
straight and smooth. I won’t lie, this process is quite time-consuming, but I
guess it’s worth it at the end.
You don’t have to go all the way to the covers with cutting, especially if
you have a paper back, because it won’t be firm enough, so I stopped about 70
pages till the end (it was a 400 page book).
After you’ve taken all of the pages out and you’re satisfied with the depth
you have, take some sand paper and try to smooth the edges (on the inside) as
much as you can. And make sure to get all the dust from it out, because it will
make glue messy otherwise. Then it is time to start applying glue. I took some
on the sponge and started on the inside, smearing it all over the book (the
bottom, as well), and then started applying it on the outer part of the pages.
Make sure you go over more than one time, as well as trying to push it down,
and then kind of separating the pages, so that the glue goes in between all of
them and it all sticks together nicely. Also, you will want to glue it all to
the back (or the cover), so that you can’t open the last part of the book (as
well as the pages that serve as bottom.
Once you’ve made sure it’s all covered in a decent amount of glue, put some
kind of a paper on the first page of the book that’s been cut out (not the
covers) and put some kind of a weight on it, so that it sticks together and the
pages don’t separate and leave it all over night.
The next day you can start decorating it. I used some golden spray-paint and
kind of randomly sprayed the book. I also did this where didn’t press on the
spray-thingy part of the spray paint, so kind of bigger drops came out of it
and it looked kind of cool.
Then i took burlap and covered the inside of the book, because I didn’t
really like how the inside looked after spray-painting it. It was kind of messy
and not as straight as I wanted and when I did that it looked much better!
So I
covered the inside with glue again, put burlap that has been precut to the
size I needed, so that it would fit perfectly in the book and I covered it with
glue once again. I sprayed the burlap in gold.
When it was all nice and dry, here is what it looked like:
I didn't put anything in, yet, because it's for a friend of mine, and I haven't bought her a present yet, but I am going to fill it up with the present and some candy. Also, on the first page, you can write a cute little note :)
If you would like to share some of your projects with me, or the ones I
showed you today and last week, I would be happy if you used #KellysDiyXmas on
Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook... I will check them out!
Did you like this DIY Christmas project? Will you do something like this
yourself? Who would you give it to?
If you have any ideas for the next DIY Christmas posts, you can always send
me a pin ;) or an email, or a tweet, or whatever you'd like!
Thank you for reading!
See you soon xxLabels: DIY, fun, hack
