Apologies to Franzen, Wallace, and Shakespear
Only a Franzen was hurt in the making of this Craft Cult
Let’s book it!
Okay, so we are doing a craft today that destroys a book. I am very usually against this type of craft. You will find a lot of crafts online that use book pages and I am usually hesitant to do those because I think it’s better to donate books or give them to someone who will read them.
Why I was ok doing this one was that the book was already destroyed in a photoshoot for my sketch team. I brought several books including Infinite Jest, a copy of Julius Ceasar, and this book, How to be Alone. The other two made it out alive, this one, not so much.
Trust me, it was just ok anyways. But since it was already pretty unusable, I thought, let’s craft with it. So if you have a book that you are sure no one can use or you don’t want to even give it away*, join me in making a secret book safe.
*Maybe a book left on your doorstep by missionaries, a copy of Art of the Deal, water damaged Taming of the Shrew that is missing some pages, or a gag gift Fifty Shades of Grey, etc.
I decided since my book no longer had a cover, I would make a new one for it. Since it’s spooky season, I went with a little spooky one. (As a child people used to tell me I looked like Geena Davis, so this has been a long dream of mine to own anyway.)
I stole the front of the book from Google Images and used a free software called Canva to make the back of the book in the same color. If you want to use the image that I used, I am also attaching the printable version here, but get creative or even just use the original cover. The world really is your oyster on this one.
For most books, you will want to print out your new cover as large as you can, but if you are using a small book, you might want to measure it and print to that size. I did the largest I could and it was still a little small for me, but I thought the finished product worked.
The next step includes gluing the pages. You will want to pick a spot in the book at least a couple of pages in and start to glue the edge of the pages after that point. I used modge podge but really any tacky or craft glue should work.
For the top pages, you can either chose to glue those too or you can leave them as is which will give your book even more camouflage. I decided to glue them because my book was quite thin and I wanted to hallow out both sides. Make sure that your sides are fully covered in glue, it will make cutting the middle of the pages out much easier if they cannot move or shift.
When your glue is fully dry, it’s time to cut your pages. You want to take an Exacto knife and slowly score into the pages. At this point I should note, this is not a good craft for kids or the clumsy. I chose to do four long scores around the writing, leaving the margins as is. You can go smaller than this, but I would not go larger. I found that the end of the writing also helped me keep my score marks consistent. If you want really straight score marks, you can also use a ruler to help you out.
Make sure your score marks meet in the corners. You should be able to remove the middle of the page. I was only able to score through about five pages at a time. Remove the pages affected by the score lines and then score the next pages. I saved my removed pages, which I will probably use for another craft in the future.
Remove those pages and continue the process until you are close to the last pages of the book or have a depth that you are happy with for your compartment.
Here is what mine looked like, I left around fifteen pages from the back of my book undisturbed so it would have a strong enough back to the safe. I then coated the exposed inner sides of the cut-out and the exposed back page with modge podge just so it would be a little stronger.
I repeated the whole possess on the top of the book as well because I wanted a larger cavity.
You probably noticed that the edges are a bit rough, my Exacto blade wasn’t that sharp. The sharper it is, the less of this happens. I removed some of it with my hands, but I found the roughness a little charming. So I ended up keeping a bit of it. You can certainly get it cleaner with a sharp blade just by tracing it around the exposed corners.
When I was happy with my cavities and the layer of glue was dry on both sides, I pasted on my cover from earlier.
Again, if your book has a cover, you might not need this step. If your book does, you can always paste over it, if you want a different title or look.
When it was dry, I was ready to fill it with my secrets.
And hide them.
Oh, what’s that? It is just a book. Certainly, not full of secrets.
Unpictured, I slid this into my book shelve, so let’s see if my boyfriend randomly finds it one day.
Today is the last day to register to vote in New York, so if you aren’t already and you are in New York, do it now! If you aren’t in New York, it’s probably a good idea to make sure you are registered and have a plan to vote. You can do that here, no matter what city you are in. I also wanted to share a tweet from my Podcast co-host that had some information, that I didn’t know as an NYC voter and I will be using this year.
Voting won’t fix everything, but it’s an important step that we should all be doing, so make sure you have a plan and are all set to vote next month!
And as always, stay safe, stay crafting.