Deep Book in a Box - by Kim

The Book of Shadows

This is an interesting shape, and I instantly imagined it as a wooden box, wrapped in antique leather to look like a mysterious old book.

First, assemble and glue the box ensuring a good fit with the pieces. Allow to dry thoroughly.

The curly trim is small butterflies cut in half lengthways and glued. Any decorative trim will do. The title rectangles on the book spine are Tando off cuts.

Faux Leather outside

I only added ‘leather’ to the flaps and spines and avoided the expanded hinges. You will need thin tissue paper, I used the sort that is used for wrapping, and ordinary PVA.

Cut a piece of tissue slightly bigger that the panel you are covering. Use a brush to spread a good coat of PVA over the panel - avoiding the hinge. 

While the PVA is wet lay on the tissue - make sure it is wrinkled by moving it slightly with your fingers before the glue dries. With the glue brush make sure it is stuck down all round the edges, and tucked up to the curly trim.

Repeat for each panel. Don’t worry if you make little tears in the tissue, they won’t show when it is finished.

Let it dry - overnight is good.

Trim the excess tissue with a sharp knife and tidy the edges.

Base coat the entire outside with Lamp Black. Let dry.

Mix True Red with a little Lamp Black to get a dark maroony-red. Start with 5:1 and adjust to taste. The black is stronger so add the black to the red little by little. With the mix, using a fairly dry brush, paint over the black but leave random spaces so that you get a textured/weathered look. Let dry.

To bring out the texture I used Duncan Iced Espresso and Champagne Ice Metallic Lustres. The lustre is on the trim, too.

Base coat the inside of the cover with black.

Faux Wood box

I tried to match my ‘planks’ with a pine table at home. Start with a yellowish-beige base. I mixed Yellow Ochre with some Burnt Umber. It doesn’t matter if it goes on a bit patchy because natural wood isn’t perfect.

When you are happy with the base coat - and it is dry - use Burnt Umber to paint on the wood grain. Add some small black marks to the grain for added realism.

Copy what you see on a piece of wood you have - a table, worktop, or chair. Practice on a spare surface to get the look you want. If you don’t like what you see, paint over it and start again.

Book covers

I found some super hand made Gelli plate printed background papers, by Julie. I cut them larger than the size needed and glued them on with PVA. When dry I used a flexible sanding block to remove the excess - by sanding the edge to give a ‘blended’ feel. I finished the edges with Metallic Lustres. The expanded hinges were not covered, but I did wipe on some lustre. On the spines of the small covers I painted black, and when dry used gold ink and a dip pen to write the titles. I did the same on offcuts glued to the larger covers. Inside the book covers are painted black.

I opened only two of the holes on the outer flap after covering with tissue, and use a length of gold leather decorative thonging to hold it closed.

Items Used:

Tando offcuts

Two small butterflies or similar for trim

Tissue paper

Background papers of your choice

DecoArt Metalic Lustre - Iced Espresso/ Champagne Ice

DecoArt acrylic colours as described