I love crafting. I can spend hours in my local craft shop stocking up on craft supplies and dreaming about my next project. Unfortunately, there is something terrible that happens between dreaming about my next crafting project and actually creating something. Like I said, I love crafting. I can spend hours trying to make a project work, but those hours end in utter defeat more often than I’d like to admit.
That is, until I started playing around with book pages. As it would turn out, book pages are not only useful for reading, but they can be a great foundation to some pretty rad crafting projects, too. Even better, though these crafts do not require you to be an expert-level crafter like the majority of Pinterest craft projects out there, the end results always look super cool.
While each book page craft requires a few additional items, the basics of what you need for any book page craft remain the same:
1. A book you are okay with destroying (check thrift stores for torn up books if you aren’t cool with ruining one of your own)
2. A paint brush
3. The holy grail of crafting: Mod Podge
Once you’ve got that together, you’re ready to jump into the world of crafting. Let’s do this.
Book Page Cell Phone Cover
In addition to the foundational book page craft supplies, you’ll also need a clear cell phone cover (you can usually find those online for about a buck), and accessories of your choosing. For my cell cover, I’m using ribbon, a paint marker, and some glitter paint.
Start by Mod Podge-ing the pages to the cell cover. You can do this however you like. Either cover the back with one full page, cut out the pages in designs, or follow my method of “organized chaos” where you select specific portions of the book to feature in your craft, but they aren’t put on the cell cover in any discernible order or pattern.
Tip: I have found that keeping the pages on the back of the cell cover rather than trying to have it cover the entire cover–the back and the sides–works better in the long run. In my experience the stuff on the sides never seem to survive being tossed in purses and shoved in pockets.
Once you’re happy with how the pages are set up, let it dry. It doesn’t have to be completely dry to move on to the next step, but you do want it to be dry enough that the pages don’t slide around the cell cover easily. Once the cell cover is mostly dry, you can add your extras. For me, that meant Mod Podge-ing the ribbons onto the cell cover, and then letting them dry.
Once the Mod Podge was completely dry, I used my paint marker to add a Deathly Hallows symbol.
Tip: If you’ve never used a paint marker before, I recommend playing with it for a bit on a piece of cardboard or paper to get the hang of how quickly the paint flows–it can be surprisingly fast if you’re not ready for it.
After a few minutes, when the Deathly Hallows symbol was completely dry, I added some glitter paint as a “top coat” to the cell cover to finish it off.
Tip: Obviously wait until you’re 150% sure it’s dry before putting the cover on your cell.
Book Page Coasters
The only other thing you need for this craft outside of your essential book pages, Mod Podge, and paint brushes are some coasters–either grab some cheap plain ones from the store, or re-purpose coasters that you have. You can get fancy and add some paint, ribbons, or other cute accessories, but I just stuck with book pages and a set of bright green coasters that I got at a wedding.
The first step is to decide if you want to put the book pages on a portion of you coaster, or cover the entire coaster with book pages. I chose the latter. I started with Mod Podge-ing the top of the coaster, tucking the paper underneath the bottom of the coaster, and then let it dry.
This is a very high tech drying system…Once the top was dry, I Mod Podged the bottom, let it dry, and voila! Book page coasters!
How have you used book pages in your crafting? Let me know some of your favorite projects in the comments!
All images taken by Kendall Ashley