Book Club: Year Two

We had our end of the year book club Christmas party this past weekend. Last year, we had it at Azalea. Or what was once Azalea, and now is the Kirkwood. This year, we got a room reserved at Django. I’m lucky to be in this group with great friends. We do a gift exchange with each other and the idea is to buy “bling” and keep it around $20-$25. That means, earrings, bracelets, necklaces.. accessories of some sort. It’s always fun to see what each other gets/gives. There were some great gifts this year! And to keep up with the tradition, I wanted to give the girls some sort of keepsake for our second year together.

I wanted to make something once again using books and this is what I came up with. I didn’t have the luxury of very much time this year so I wanted to make it somewhat easy to make. I found this quote by Shel Silverstein that I really liked:

“Draw a crazy picture,
Write a nutty poem,
Sing a mumble-gumble song,
Whistle through your comb.
Do a loony-goony dance
‘Cross the kitchen floor,
Put something silly in the world
That ain’t been there before.”
― Shel Silverstein

I thought this would be perfect for a group of really creative girls.

So I first designed the quote. I hand-lettered and drew it all out on a piece of paper first, then scanned it in and flipped it so I could eventually transfer it onto a canvas.

Next, I went to the Salvation Army to find some old books I could rip apart. I bought four of them for around $3.99. I made sure I got some books that had a variety of page colors. Some with a yellowish tint and some more white. I wanted to give the canvas a variety of font sizes and colors.

Then I used mod podge to glue the ripped out pages to the canvas.

Afer that dried, I took a variety of colors and watered them down to make them more transparent and painted the canvas where the color could be the background for my quote.

Once that dried, I coated both the canvas and the paper with mod podge, and adhered it to the canvas.

Then I made sure there were no bubbles and smoothed out the paper so it was all smooth. Then I let it dry for 24 hours.

After it dried, I took foam brush and soaked the canvas with water, and slowly peeled away the paper. I used my fingers to get all the paper off. I did this a few times to make sure I got all the paper off.

Once I was happy with it, I sprayed it with a protective varnish to seal it off.

I can’t wait for next year!