Creative

Book painting crafts are quite a big thing, if you look in the right place! Really talented people sell their amazing designs, recreating covers of popular books and selling them.

For me, I personally wouldn’t buy one because I like the books that I read to be clean, but as a craft I think it’s an amazing idea.

Yes, I did partially destroy a book for this craft, but all crafts I did for the week involved only 2 books, both of which were old, falling apart and second hand. I don’t believe in the destruction of books, but books that have reached the end of their time can get some extra love and be re-purposed for other great things. So if you do this craft, I suggest not getting a new book but going to your local thrift shop and grabbing a book from there. I generally avoid popular novels and religious books!

So, that being said, let’s get started!

Step 1: 

Get your inspiration from Pinterest! It’s a great place to start for book ideas. What you paint doesn’t need to be related for the topic of the book as you probably chose something really obscure! So get some ideas from online.

Step 2:

Now, make sure to cover your space with newspaper (look at all those discounts!). I find that that worked just fine to keep my area clean! If you’ve got a smaller child doing this craft, then you may want to…cover everything!

Step 3: 

Get your book out. Make sure that you’ve dusted any dust off the cover or any dirt that could be on it. You want it as clean as possible!

Step 4: 

Make sure all your painting supplies are ready! For me, I used acrylic paint for this project due to the spine being made out of a material that seemed to absorb paint. Watercolors wouldn’t work because of the dark color of the book as well. So depending on the book, and the idea, you may want a different kind of paint. Think about what your end result will be. Maybe you will be using markers! Or just lettering all over the front. But for my project, I chose to use acrylic paint.

Step 5:

Now I’m the least creative person so I was unable to easily draw this wolf. So I decided to print out a silhouette. Since you’re not using this to make money off of, you don’t need to worry about copy right so you can use anything you want. However if you’re looking to potentially sell later, make sure you use free source images from places like Pixabay.

Step 6:

To transfer my wolf to my book, I shaded in the back and then traced it on. The shading didn’t work so much as the book was quite dark, but I was able to make an impression in the cover to trace with my pencil once I was done. You can use tracing paper and do it that way, but I find that just shading in the back is just as easy. You need to take your time as it’s not as perfect, but for most projects, the general idea works fine.

Step 7:

Now that I had my shape traced on, I made sure to darken the outlining because once I started painting I would loose the clear cut shape. Add anything extra that you want in your picture!

Step 8

It’s finally time for the fun part! You get to paint. This I can’t tell you how to do. I personally used a chiseled edge brush to get sharper lines and a larger brush to paint larger spaces. But it really depends the idea you’re going for. The benefit with acrylic paint was that it dried so fast, so as I was painting it was drying and I could quickly start doing next parts!

Overall this was an extremely fun project for me. I’ve never done something like this before but I think I’ll do it again, once I can think up what I want to create next! It was so simple, didn’t take a lot of time, and was so relaxing. It’s perfect for those summer days when you, or your children, are at a loose end! Not only do they get to be messy and creative, they get to make something they can be proud of and put on their bookshelf!

You could decide to paint the entire book, including the spine, with multiple designs or keep one theme going. I didn’t do so as I used the book for multiple projects so I needed to keep bits clear. But it is completely up to you!

I hope that this gave you some inspiration! Good luck!

If you do decide to create something, I’d love to see what you make. Either email me a picture or, if you share it on Instagram, tag me @mylibrarycardworeout, or if you Tweet it, share it to @mlcwo! I’d love to see what you make!