So bad about blogging now and I’ve just moved my blog over here to WordPress (a work in progress).  I couldn’t change my URL/last name without losing those followers I MIGHT still have after all these years, so I’m just re-directing.   I thought I should post the pics of the Spooky Spell Book we made before Christmas actually got here.  I should probably throw in some pumpkin patch pics as well.  At this rate, I will be posting Christmas pics on Easter.

First off, here’s some pumpkin patch pics:

Now here’s the pics from start to finish of the Spooky Spell Book we made for Halloween.  It started out just as a decoration for the table, but then I thought it would make a great scrapbook of all the Halloween’s for the girls.  So every year I will put their pics in there.  I started with an unabridged dictionary from 1988.  Luckily, my mom had one just lying around 🙂  Who uses actual dictionaries these days? I wanted to put secret compartments in it so I took my X-acto knife and tediously cut through hundreds of sheets of paper.  (I don’t have any pictures of this process, sorry.) My thumb and index finger were numb for about a week after doing this.  Not fun.

To prepare the outside of the book I used Gesso and painted over everything, except the pages.

I knew I wanted some type of design on the front of it and remembered seeing this on Pinterest.  So I searched the internet for  some kind of design to put on the front.  I found some over at DeviantArt.  I first tried using some cheap White Glue we had  and it was way too thin and it wasn’t giving the raised look that I was going for.  So Bella had some Crayola No-Run School Glue and it was thick and the bottle was small so it was easy to deal with, worked perfectly!  I also added some decoration to the spine.  I let the design dry overnight.  I then painted another coat of Gesso on top so that the paint would stick to the glue.

I took 4 different colors of matte acrylic paint – dark brown, light cinnamon, mustard and grey .  There was no rhyme or reason to painting, I just put it on there until it looked good and OLD and making sure all the white was covered.

I let that dry for a few hours and then added a coat of Instant Age Varnish. The knob on the outside was found in the jewelry aisle at Michaels.  Not even sure what they originally started out as, I just knew I wanted something that looked like a knob on the front.   I hot glued them on, added a chain with some jewels on it for a bookmark.

I found some really cool OLD Tarot Card Photoshop brushes on DeviantArt, so I printed them out, cut them into cards, tea dyed and dried them and tucked them inside their own little pocket in the top of the book.  There is another little secret compartment on the bottom of the book where I plan to put a little mini album of some sort.  Next year, next year!

As far as the inside of the book goes, I ripped out A WHOLE LOT of pages and the thing just seemed like it kept getting bigger and bigger with the more glue I put on.  I was gluing about 3-4 pages together to make them thicker, not the whole book just some.  I scoured the internet for spooky spells, most of what I found came from Wizards of Waverly Place, Harry Potter or Charmed but I did find some other cool stuff on DeviantArt – Broom Licenses, aka Astral Travel.  I printed them out and glued them all into the book.  Since the book was getting fatter and fatter, I figured that I wouldn’t be able to add many bulky embellishments to the photos I put in there, so I mostly used paint.  I also painted all the edges of the paper with antique gold paint.

So, there you go.  It was fun to make but a lot of work!