Jar of Vintage Buttons: DIY: part 1 of project book

I vowed to put down the hot glue gun for a few weeks after all of my craft show madness was over and to focus on spending time with the family for the holidays. Now that the holidays are over I've been itching to plug that sucker back in and get crafting! This DIY is a compilation of a few quick projects all using one common material: books. I have several projects and in an effort to not make this post insanely long, I'll split them up into 2 posts.

Now, I know, I know, I'm sure some of you out there are cringing to think that I'm about to tear apart a book. Well, sometimes in the name of crafting, you have to deface a dollar store romance novel or two!

DIY Project #1 - romantic book flowers

You may remember these flowers from my own rendition of Tasha's ornament bud vase from Day 8 of the 12 Days of Christmas. I'm using a technique that is easy as pie for making rolled flowers.

Step 1: Using 2-3 pages out of a book, cut into a square. Obviously the larger your square the larger your flowers will be.

Step 2: Once you have your stacked square of pages, take a pencil and beginning from the middle of your page, start drawing a spiral shape outward.

Step 3: Using a pair of scissors, start cutting along the spiral from the outside point in toward the middle. You will end up with a little tab in the middle.

Step 4: Begin rolling the flower inward and secure with a glue dot every once and awhile. That tab at the end will be good for covering the back of the flower.

Step 5: Paint your flower with a bit of glue and dip into glitter

Step 6: Cut some leaves from any scraps and voila!

DIY Project #2 - pottery barn inspired book stack

Browsing through my Pottery Barn catalog I saw a bowl full of lovely stacked books that caught my eye. They were bound together 4 at a time and classically simple...and a little overpriced! Around $40 for the set!!! For reals???? So I broke out my stack of $1 store book finds and got to work! The whole project cost me a whopping $4.

Step 1: Remove the front and back covers from your paperback books along with as much of you can of the spine.

Step 2: You could tea stain the sides of each book, but I used a brown ink pad to rub over the sides of the books and covers. Much quicker and less messy. To ink the cover of each book I took a paper towel and blotted it onto the ink pad and lightly rubbed onto the book.