Make a Book out of a Bag!
Hello, my fellow contrary crafters! Today I thought of why we craft. I’m thrifty, I like to have pretty and useful things (mostly pretty, though) to decorate my home with or find use in! We usually “craft” with overabundant or unused items. So, here I am today with this book “bag” that has been gathering dust—and goodness graciousness, I need some reading material! I originally planned to gift it to my boyfriend’s ten-year-old sister, but because of my practical nature, I decided to give her thrift store socks dyed in yellow onion skins. Don’t you just love those earthy colors? Anyways… Here is the ‘before’ book with its strange leather strap.
And here it is filled with some junk I threw away.
My visiting brother tried to be kind and take it off my hands, but alas, I need to turn it into a book. Do you ever get those obsessive crafting cravings and just have to put them into action?!
When you come across one of these mass-produced, impersonal books, you will first want to empty it of any trash that was left inside.
Next you will want to rip out the fabric. I see there was a large piece for the cover of the book, with a sewn-on pocket. Then the ‘box’ of the book had a total of three pieces. I had to tear off the middle wrap-around piece first. It was a very long rectangle that was glued on. Then I pried off the top edging. All that was left was to scrape off the ‘floor’ piece.
So much work ahead of me, now! I will start by removing the layer of glue that secured the fabric pieces.
*sigh* Much better… I chose to remove the glue with a q-tip and tweezers. So, apparently these magnets let the book cover clack satisfyingly to the book. The bottom one is embedded into the book a bit, which kept a smaller gap when it was closed. I need to get rid of those and the rest of the glue on the inside of the book.
I was feeling quite productive and added the first couple blank pages. I conveniently had the matching bag of pages from my paper collection. I enjoy frequenting the neighborhood dumpsters to take the treasures that people so thoughtlessly throw away. According to the scraps, it looks like somebody used a box-cutter to get through all of it, too bad they didn’t do a neater job, their convenience costed me a lot of time.
It looks as though there was a .5” seam on three sides of the page and then .75” for the part that had the magnet. Now after removing the glue on the outside of the pages, I have a fully-functioning book! This should keep me occupied until I’m ready to do another destruction instruction!
