Monday, September 07, 2015

Crafting: Vintage Graphics printed on old book paper

Here is a great idea for book arts and crafting I got from a friend on Facebook who had posted a HomeTalk article. Here is the article

DIY Book Page Art Magnet With Graphics

It's actually not just magnets, but greeting cards, book covers, book marks, and kind of paper art really. Here is what you do.

Select an old book bought at a jumble sale or library discard sale. I have several neat ones. One is a Spanish dictionary and one that is an oversized 1950s world architecture book.

HomeTalk pic

Tear out a page from it and put it upside down in the printer.

HomeTalk pic

Then find an image you like, either on your computer or on the internet. I really enjoy The Graphics Fairy for free vintage clip art and other graphics. www.thegraphicsfairy.com

In essence, you're just using the book page as your printer paper.

EPrata photo
then once the graphic is printed on your book paper, you can do what you like to it. As a first try, I made bookmarks. I am still working on how to center my graphic on the book page. It was easier to make bookmarks because I could cut them up and not worry about the centering until I gained more experience with the process-

EPrata photo
You can see here that I glued the papers onto cardstock. You can, at this point, glue them onto magnets, or fiberboard coaster material, or cardboard, or whatever.
EPrata photo

I pressed them, let the glue dry and then I laminated them with my new Swingline Laminator I bought for cheap through Amazon.  Voila!

So easy! I can see already I am going to have to buy more printer ink! ;)


3 comments:

Grace to You said...

What a great idea - I love it!

Have you ever heard of altered books? It's where you take an old book, tear out most of the pages, and paint what's left...then you use the pages to make your own book with mixed media. My favorite one was made with a small book that had pine boughs on each chapter cover page; I kept those pages and used the chapter titles to build my book, using only what I had on hand. It was so much fun!

Deby said...

Thanks for being the enabler! I must try this. It looks wonderful. Will my collection of old books for crafts, I have lots of pages. Old dictionary pages would be great also. Thank you for posting directions.

Elizabeth Prata said...

Deby, I am so glad you have some old books you can try this with! Let me know how it's going as you experiment. Grace To Yo, yes, I have heard of altered books. I made one, once! Yours sounds really pretty. I love the idea of using the same graphic for each chapter break.