Now that my birthday is over (which was a good day!), I'm starting on all the decorations for Halloween...even though it's still September. hehehe. I'm overly excited.
The the spell books are up first on the list of things.
A craft store by my work sells butcher paper by the yard, so I went and got some of the brown butcher paper. It was $1.00 for 2 yards of paper. I was pretty surprised at the price, but maybe I am just uneducated about the price of different types of paper. I also got some black paper, but that is for a later project.
Essentially I just made up wrapping the books. I just did the covers like you do for school books. Or like wrapping half of a present, ish. I just cut it out so there were a couple inches hanging out all around the the edges. Then on the corners, I cut the paper from the corner so the corners would be clean looking after they were all folded over.
(This was a re-enactment of wrapping because I didn't take pictures when I first did this.)
Then I just folded over all the sides and taped them in place. I tried not to put the tape directly on the inside of the book cover because I didn't want to rip the inside covers when I took the paper off later.
Something to note about wrapping hard back books - it was a little tricky. I had the book's cover laying open just one side at a time to fold and tape all the paper. But then when I closed it, there wasn't enough room and the tape came off. So make sure for hard back books you leave some room around the spine so it will close all the way. It wasn't a big deal, I just had to adjust some things.
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| A not-so-awesome phone pic |
After I covered them all, I used the ink pad to brown the edges of the books. I thought this helped make them look more used. I just used a make up sponge that I cut up for inking the edges of scrapbooking papers and did all around the edges. (I figure you could use like paper towels wrapped around your finger if you would like.) On the spine and front I inked in a little more to make it look a little more worn, if that makes sense. This was the part that does not need to be perfect. Really, I didn't think about this part very hard at all.
Then I made some titles with Microsoft Word. I just typed the title, found a font I liked that I thought matched the type of book it was, and made sure it would fit on the cover. I measured the book cover, and looked on the marks on Word to make sure the title fit in the area I measured. I inserted some shapes and Clip Art for the frames around the titles. (For the Clip Art, I just searched things like frames, swirls, flourish.)
I cut out the titles, browned the edges like I did on the books, and glued them on the book (making sure I got as close to the edge of the paper as possible. I didn't want them to peel). For the spines, I did the same process, just made them all small enough to fit.
I am still planning on making the potion book be the one that's open on the table. And I am researching easy ways to make the Monsters book that looks like a monster. We'll see what we can find. Let me know if you have any ideas for that!
Remember how I am doing this for as cheap as possible? Well here's a break down of the prices:
Books I already owned: free (woot!)
I also used tape and a brown ink pad - already on hand
2 yards of brown butcher paper: $1
And I didn't even use all the butcher paper, so it really wasn't even a dollar!! HOLLERRR!!!
I love these so much and I'm glad I started with this project. Once again, I was inspired by Melissa's post at Until Wednesday Calls. Here was her project, which was different but very similar: Until Wednesday Calls: How To: Harry Potter Text Book Covers. She has really cool designs!
This was easy enough that I was reassured that I can do this and I can do this for cheap! I'm excited to move on to the next Harry Potter project soon!!
Still would love to hear any amazing ideas anyone has for other Harry Potter themed decor!
I linked this post up at theturquoisehome.com for her Work It Wednesday party. Love her blog and all the inspiration there.
I think Bennett is really going to want to see your house when you get it all decorated! He is so into Harry Potter right now...in fact that is who he is being for Halloween.
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