our forever (fun)house: Read All About It! Removable Book Page Backing Tutorial

Welcome back for a fun tutorial on backing your display shelves with antique book pages!

I'm working on getting my house ready for Thanksgiving (Yes, it takes me THAT long), and I decided the giant hutch that lives behind my eat-in kitchen table was looking kind of drab. It needed a little life breathed back into it. And what screams LIFE! more than a selection of poems and short stories written by a bunch of dead people?

I kid. I kid. I love the look of antique book pages displayed on an accent wall or made into something cool like a wreath.

Via

They're an easy way to add visual interest and texture while still neutral enough to blend in with any decor. And they're cheap. Win win!

I chose to adhere my book pages to sheets of foam board so I could easily remove them if I ever got tired of them. You can skip this step if you're super in love with book pages and there's no way you'll ever get sick of them.

Without further adieu, let's get started!

For this project, you'll need:

A couple of vintage books with interesting looking pages (I chose two in different sizes and degrees of color fading)
A bottle of wine and a very large glass
A sharp knife, such as an x-acto or a box cutter
Scrapbooking adhesive squares
Foam board
A Ruler/tape measure
A Pencil
A large, thin board or yardstick
Clamps
Optional: Some kind of handsaw for cutting the foam board. A sharp knife will do if you don't have a saw.

Start by measuring the space you want to fill. The shelves in my hutch are removable, so I just took them out and measured the space behind them.

Next you need to trim your foam board to fit the back of your space. Using your ruler, measure and mark where you need to cut your board at both ends, then use the long, skinny board to draw a line the length of the board. This is your cut line.

Clamp the board in place along your cut line. This makes it so much easier when you go to cut the foam board. The clamps will keep it from moving around and guarantee you get a straight cut.

Start cutting! A handsaw is faster, but a sharp knife will do the trick, especially if you've already clamped the boards in place.

(Sorry for the blurry picture. Justin did this part for me while I tended to Buggy Boy. Apparently it's hard to take a picture of yourself cutting and cut at the same time, or whatever.)

Now that you have a perfectly trimmed sheet of foam board, you're ready for your book pages.

This next step is very important. Go to the kitchen and pour yourself a nice big glass of wine. If you're anything like me, you're going to need to it to work up the courage to actually destroy (gasp!) a book.

Drink said wine standing at the kitchen counter, reading pages from your book, wavering about whether or not you can actually ruin a perfectly good book, check online to make sure it isn't a first edition that's actually worth a fortune because that would totally be your luck, finish your wine and decide what the hell, you can find another copy on Etsy for twelve bucks.

With your new found nerves of steel, select the pages you want to use. It takes a lot of pages, so give up the dream of preserving your book.

Run your x-acto or box cutter along the edge of your pages as close to the binding as you can. (Disclaimer: DO NOT consume a giant glass of wine and then use your lap as a book cutting table, unless you are a professional wine drinker like I am.)

Once you have more pages than you could ever possibly need, cut some more. Seriously, it takes A LOT of pages.

Now you're ready to arrange them. If you're a normal human being, you can use the scrapbooking squares to adhere the pages as you go. If you're a total type A control freak, you can arrange them all the way you want them and then go back and gently lift one piece at a time to add the adhesive squares. Obviously, this is the way I did it.