Old Books to New Tables

I always wondered who bought old textbooks at the thrift store. Now I know it's me.

I've been on the lookout for large books to make a side table for my couch. You know, just a place to put a cup of tea and the remote. I lucked on a book sale where every book was 10 cents each and loaded up the cart.

I found a few books that had the gold foil design I was looking for.

For the rest, I would have to fake it. I covered the shiny books with a layer of paper towel and white glue and painted them to look like leather. Then I glued the pages shut.

Now for the design. I wanted to use A Handbook of Ornament for inspiration. I had to answer the big question: How do you transfer a line drawing to gold foil?

This is how I did it using the supplies I had on hand. I scanned an image, opened it in Photoshop 6 (any drawing program with layers will work), added a new layer, and traced the lines on a new layer using my Bamboo Fun pen tablet.

Once I had it traced, I made the red lines black and inverted the image.

Some of the images I chose and the results:

 

 

I printed out the designs on a sample of gold foil inkjet paper I had, cut them out, and glued them to the plain book spines.

I stenciled a fleur–de–lis onto this spine.

I just stacked the books for now. My husband has embraced this project and is engineering a way to keep the books stacked and sturdy, which is good, because he's adopted the second book stack I got.

Thanks,

Aimee