Did you know you can take your old, unwanted comic books and use them to decorate your things, like phone cases, shoes, furniture, and instruments? We’re all about DIY geeky crafts here at Geek & Sundry, so we thought we’d share this fun idea with you all. It’s cheap, easy, and is sure to give your things that extra added bit of comic book character. We’ll show you how to do it, step by step, and give you some ideas for what types of items you can decorate!
For this project, it’s best to choose something old or tarnished that needs a little bit of sprucing up. You don’t want to use a brand new item that is perfectly fine how it is. In this case, we took an old, scratched up acoustic guitar that was just lying around, and decided to give it a second life.
Here’s what you’ll need:
-Mod Podge Decoupage Finish
-Paint Brushes
-Scissors
-X-acto Knife
-Old, unwanted comic books (Seriously, don’t use your favorite comics or anything that’s worth a ton of money. Dig through the dollar bin at your local comic book store.)
First step, take your old comic books and start to cut out the panels and pages that have cool images or scenes on them. You want to go for ones with a lot of color, and try to choose different sizes and styles. It will help you later on if you have more of a mix of sizes and shapes. Save the covers for later. Hint: sometimes the best images aren’t actually in the comic panels themselves, but in the ads.
Then, start by painting a thin coat of Mod Podge over the entire surface of the object you are decorating. Once you have spread the coat evenly, start layering comic panels and cut outs all over the surface. You want to make sure that the pages are stuck strongly to the surface, so you might want to have your paint brush handy. Once you have the surface completely covered, brush another layer of Mod Podge over ALL of the comic cutouts. Hint: Overlap the edges with your cutouts. This will give you total coverage, instead of having empty gaps along the sides.
Next, take your comic book covers and cut out the titles, characters, and any other cool and colorful pictures that stand out to you. In this case, we cut out the titles and a few of the characters (Again, sometimes the ads have great character images you can use for this part). Next, making sure that the surface of the object is still covered in a wet layer of Mod Podge, place the titles and characters around the surface. This effect will make the titles and characters look like they are leaping from the surface. The bright colors of the cover pages will make these cutouts stand out more, and pop out to the eyes. Brush one, final layer across the entire surface of the object and allow to dry. Hint: Spread them out, making sure the action covers the object’s surface.
Lastly, once the object is completely dry, you’ll want to go over all of the edges with an X-acto Knife and trim everything so that there are no over-hanging edges. This will make everything look polished, crisp, and professional. Hint: Take it nice and slow. Sometimes the pages will start to rip if you go too fast, so make sure you slowly cut around the edges so your end project looks nice.
And that’s it! Not too hard at all, right? The cool part about this project is that you can choose any type of object, big or small, and make it your own. Use any type of comic book or graphic novel to give it your own special touch. Don’t want to ruin your comic books? Print out images on your computer for a similar effect! If you’re looking for some ideas for items that you can Mod Podge, then take a look at these awesome creations from fellow crafty geeks!
Now, go out and make something beautiful! Send us photos of your finished products and we might share them! Have any suggestions or questions? Leave us a comment below!