Do you have some old books lying around the house that have outdated information or are in bad shape? Did you know that you can can give old books a new life by turning them into some cool crafts or decorative pieces? Here are a few ideas that you can make for yourself or as gifts for family and friends.
Decoupage Vase
Decoupage is the art of decorating an object using paper cutouts and glue. You can add other embellishments like gold leaf, special paint effects, or fabric, but the process itself is very simple. You can find all the directions you need to make a decoupage vase
here but there is not much to it other than taking pieces of paper and using a glue (Mod Podge is often preferred by crafters but I just used basic school glue because it is what I had at home) to paste the pieces on a glass bottle. There is a bit more to the process than just sticking the pieces of paper on with glue, you really need to paint the entire piece of paper with the glue and then apply glue over the top to seal it.
The great thing about decoupage is you can make some unique pieces that look very impressive but it is quite easy. I wanted to try it myself and I have included a photo of the vase I made. I even folded some paper flowers to go in the vase. The flowers were a bit more tricky, you can find the link to some directions here, but there are easier designs to try and some that are more kid-friendly. Perhaps you are familiar with tissue paper flowers. I used to make these as child and I did not have tissue paper by folding a bunch of pieces of Kleenex together and peeling apart each layer. You can easily make these flowers using recycled paper too. Book pages might be a bit thick to work well but I made one using some old flyers.
Book Folding
Pictou-Antigonish Regional Library is very lucky to have some very talented staff members who are much more gifted than I am at turning books into beautiful pieces of art. I've included some photos of very cool book folding designs created by Cristal Van de Pol, Branch Assistant at the New Glasgow Library. Once our libraries open for programming again, make sure you try out one of her crafting programs. But until then, Cristal has created a
video to show you how to fold a book into the fairy house pictured below.
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Book Heart Photo credit: Cristal Van de Pol
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Fairy House Photo credit: Cristal Van de Pol
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| Hedgehog Photo credit: Cristal Van de Pol |
You can find more book folding projects and other bookish craft ideas at the following links:
Do you have a project to share with us? Let us know. You can find our contact information listed on the blog.
