Halloween Spell Book Tutorial

A couple of weeks ago, as part of a Disney craft swap group, I made some Halloween Spell Books.  Several people asked me either to A) Make them one they could buy or B) Tell them how to make them.  I still needed to make myself a Spell Book and I don't like selling my crafts because my perfectionism drives me crazy if I do, so I decided to make a tutorial.

Materials:

- Book you aren't intending to read again

- Plastic Halloween decorations (spiders, skeletons, vampire teeth, etc)

- Hot glue gun

- paper towel

- modge podge

- black paint

- gold or copper paint

- black ribbon

I started with a book I bought from the Dollar Store.  I chose it because the cover was already black so I knew that I wouldn't have trouble covering it with black paint.

My husband applauded my choice of books because he has apparently read the Portrait of Dorian Gray and thought it was an appropriate Halloween book.  I'll take his word for it.  I love to read, but not thrillers.  I opened the book to the middle and sprayed the pages with a whole bunch of water.  this gave it a curled, older look.

Now you can create the two inner pages yourself or you can find some on the internet.  Thank you to http://griffithsrated.blogspot.com for creating these pages that I used.  You can download them here:  http://www.mediafire.com/folder/vdsbazb64zz7d45,tqm8s3qpdx41376/shared  I only had a black and white laser printer so I needed to make my pages look a little older.  I brewed some tea (because I'm slightly addicted to Sweet Tea) and then pressed the used tea bags all over the pages and let them dry.

Next it was time to work on the outside of the book.  I took some of the plastic Halloween decorations and glued them on.  You can also use raised letters, thumbtacks, etc. to decorate your book.

After gluing take a piece of paper towel and separate the two layers.

Modge podge the entire cover of the book, including over the Halloween decorations.  Don't worry if the paper towel gets wrinkled or overlaps on each other.  At this point it doesn't look very pretty.  But it will get better.

When the modge podge is completely dry, paint over it with black paint.  When the black paint is dry, lightly brush over  all of the decorations and bumps with gold or copper paint to give it more of an aged look.

When the cover is completely dry it's time to turn it over.  Take your dried pages and modge podge them into the book.

After the modge lodge is dry just cut a piece of black ribbon and hot glue it to the middle of your book from your bookmark.

I hope you guys enjoyed this tutorial!  If you have any questions, please let me know!