My Wicked New Potion Book

I have been so looking forward to sharing this project with you guys! Months back, I ran across a spooky book tutorial on Pinterest. The project originated from the Dave Lowe Design blog. His Making Creepy Books post showed how with a hard cover book, some cardboard scraps, and a little Mod Podged paper towel, you can get what looks like a leathery antique.

I was excited to give the project a try the minute I saw it and happened to have an old book on hand:

As you can see, this book wasn't in the best of shape. The spine was falling apart and there were water stains.

So as much as I'd regularly hate to mess with an old book, this one could go. Plus, I already know how to swim.

In addition to the old book, I also had some old cardboard. The thin sheet was once the back of a notebook.

As in the tutorial, I began by choosing some shapes to make into 3D elements. After drawing those out, I cut the shapes from the cardboard.

Next, I painted over the shapes to give them a little dimension. I used tempera paint, but I would think any type of paint could work.

Then came the mummy phase. I Mod Podged some paper towel over the whole book. I also added some cardboard "hinges" on the side.

Once the paper towel was dry, it felt really hard and crusty.

I painted over the paper towel with a mixture of black and metallic craft paint until I had a leathery look going. The bright metallic touches were added with gold craft paint and a bronze Sharpie.

I printed out the "Potions" title on my printer and ripped the edges around it before gluing it on the book. The font I used is appropriately enough named Witches Magic. For anyone who'd like to download that font: Witches Magic Font

 

I wanted to create a fancy antique look with the pages, so I decided to paint over them with gold paint. Just a note - if you do this you might not get those pages apart too easily in the future.

The back of the book:

I am so happy with how this project turned out! I plan to prop this book up with the potion bottle collection this year. I think it will look like the perfect little cookbook of sorts near all those spooky little bottled ingredients!

If you guys have made any spooky books or plan to, I'd love to see the results!