Salvaged Book Project

Books... not just for reading!

I've become good buddies with the librarian at the school I work at, and I recently found out that they had to get rid of books that had been printed before a certain date (I think these were 70's or before). The librarian told me that she tries to give away the books but often no one wants them because they're old or maybe a little bit moldy/dusty. If she can't find a taker for the books they end up getting thrown into the recycle bin, perfectly good books getting thrown out--what a shame! I asked if I could look through the stacks and repurpose some of the books, and repurpose i did! I've used the books to make such projects as valentine cards and paper flowers, but I think my latest is by far my best!

Using a 16x20 canvas I created a piece of monogram magic! okay, well i don't know if its really a monogram because it's just ONE letter, but I'm gonna call it that anyway...

To begin I tore out pages from one of my books, I wanted to use only book pages without illustrations. I cut them up in pieces of various sizes and decoupaged them onto my canvas.

 

I used cardstock to create the letter I wanted to use in my artwork.
(note: at this point i didn't glue it to the canvas, it's just sitting on the canvas for this picture.)

I went through several of the books I salvaged and cut out colorful pictures that I like. Once I had them all ready, I decoupaged them onto the L that I made out of cardstock.





Once the L was finished I decoupaged that onto the my canvas and created a border (about 1 cm) out of my leftover book scraps.

I am really pleased w/ my finished product, I hope you like it too!

-Leslie