Pretty Handmade Papers Are So Beautiful
Book covering is a thing many of us have to do for school to protect our school books. But it's fun to cover work books or sketch books or any book you use frequently. A great way to really personalise a book you love.
The same technique we use here can be used to cover boxes and photo albums and many other things. Follow this tutorial and upgrade a book you are giving as a gift.
Things You Will Need:
- Decorative papers
- Glue
- Books to cover
- Pencil
- A fine paintbrush
Cutting The Paper For Our Book Covering
First find the book we want to cover. Now lay out the paper we want to use for covering our book. Place the book on top of the paper. Draw a border around the book. Leave a margin of approximately 4cms of extra paper around each edge of the book.
We need to do something special near the spine of the book.
Where the spine lines up on the paper, mark two lines with a pencil going to the edge of the paper. Mark lines from both sides of the spine to the edge of the paper. Cut these two slits and fold the spine paper over and inwards to hide it.
Book Covering Start On One Side
Now work on one side of the book first. Fold the edges over. Fold the top and bottom over and glue down. Make another fold at the corner to make a sort of pleated fold. Fold the side edge of the book cover over and glue in place.
Wait for all the glue to dry.
Complete the same on the other side. Keep checking you can close the book before finally gluing the cover.
Decorations For Our Book Covering
Use scissors and cut out a selection of flower and any embellishments or details you want to add to the outside. Use a pencil to draw the details first, if you need to. Maybe look on the internet and copy any interesting designs you find.
Decorate the Book Covering
Arrange the paper shapes on the book cover. Rearrange until you are happy with the design. When you are happy glue down the book covering details. Do the same for the back if needed.
You can also paint on more details with a fine paintbrush.
What other things can we cover?
Make Simple Gift Boxes Special
Gift boxes you buy are usually a bit boring and plain to appeal to the most people. Make a simply gift box special, by customizing it with personalised details.
Cut paper flowers and hearts and decorate the box. Use different textured papers and colours to make the gift box special.
Covered Photo Album
No one has a photo album any more, and yet they are such a wonderful thing to look through. Maybe make yourself a photo album and personalise it with decorative papers and designs and textures.
Decorative Book Covering
The same techniques of wrapping a book, can be used for a gift box, a notepad or a photo album. Express your inner creativity and really think about the design.
Making the book covering is often very simple. Finding the design and personalising it to the application can often be the the tricky part. But this is the part that gives you the most opportunity to express your creativity.
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