Decorative Books With Acrylic Paint
Displaying books on a bookshelf is beautiful, but what if we display books that belong more to your house decoration style and colors. I what some books on my shelves that I tried to match with my home style and colors but it was never working as I wished. I love the content of my books and won’t get rid of them, that’s why I thought about a trick to make them having a beautiful look and a nice content. The process is very simple, you’ll need hardcover books, acrylic paint, i used gold craft paint, brushes and mod podge glue.
my sister loved them and asked me to make her some decorative books too. But she won’t paint over her actual books. All what I did, I went to the closet thrift store like goodwill for instance and bought some hardcover books from there for a dollar each. Yup! You can do that too.
I looked on some samples online to get inspired, but believe me the inspiration came by it self. It was so much fun doing this project.
this is not the books I made over but they were exactly the same kind. My books had a cover and it was hard to work on them because they were slippery. I removed them to work only with the real book cover. You can leave the cover if you want to keep the title intact.
Learn how to repair book binding.
I started by painting a base color all over the book. And let it dry for like after 20 minutes.
leave the writing for the end, don’t do like me heh!!! I was never satisfied by the result and just adding touches until finally get satisfied.
I mixed a lighter color and a darker color just by painting vertical lines randomly. With my brush I was painting a line and another line and then blend everything together. Always go from the top to the bottom and the opposite continuously. Until it’s well blended.
With a fine brush I added a fine line using a gold craft paint and blended up to just have a hint of shiny brown.
you can find the acrylic paints in all craft stores and Walmart.
ones it’s dry, use an alphabet stencil (from dollar tree store) and write on using a sharpie or a black paint. I used a sharpie it’s more controllable and mess free.
I added the two gold lines on the sides to make it more fancier and also a reminder of the hint of the gold on the cover.
finally, when completely dry, I used a clean brush and gives it a coat of the mod podge glue. This step is very important because it seals everything in and make it smoother. The acrylic paint had a matte finish so the mod podge dives it a shiny and smooth touch.
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You can do the same thing using craft paper and ain’t and folding it into a book cover if you don’t want to harm the books original cover. With most books, the cover makes a big difference on resale value!
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One love the finish. Two although I hate worded “art” on walls, especially stating the obvious I find this interpretation rather nice. Calm colors with books tucked on a bookshelf giving gentle affirmation for those who look; a nice feel.
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