There and Back Again Book Purse: Handles and painting the cover

Finished and Unfinished

As I mentioned last week, I wanted to do a book purse based on the adventures from The Hobbit.  I decided to make my own book cover because it's a bit of a shortcut... I can design the cover myself and don't have to spend the time or energy looking for the exact book at the right price.  I can't see paying more than a few bucks for a book I'm about to murder the heck out of.  I ended up getting the fabric and book for less than 10 bucks at my local Goodwill.  This project is pretty involved, so I'll be breaking this up into 2 parts.

You're going to need a lot
more beer, kiddo.

So for my bibliophiles, these posts may be slightly traumatic as they depict graphic images of a book that has been dissected for the sake of art.  I'll make the appropriate offerings to appease the Ghods...

Some day.

So... on to the book murder!

Supplies (Entire project)

Acrylic Paint
Book
Button (from dress)
Craft knife
Duct tape
Fabric: Maybe 1/2 a yard?  I'm recycling mine from a dress with a pretty striped emerald fabric
Glue sticks and hot glue
Mod Podge
Nail Polish
Poster board or other scrap cardboard
Purse findings: Rings and magnet from an old purse
Sanding tool
scissors
Wire (optional)

Cutting The Handles

I like doing projects on the cheap and I wasn't sure how I was going to do the handles to the purse.  I've seen several where they used D rings and chain in order to make a shoulder strap or even just leaving it as a clutch, which are both great looks. I decided on doing handles from the book itself because I love any excuse to bust out the sculpting tools.  This is a similar method to laminated sculpture projects. The size and glue end up keeping the entire thing together, even if you sand the paper with a power tool.

I drew a  handle shape and cut them from the book pages with a craft knife.  They can be as fanciful as you want, but I went for a very simple shape since I haven't done any of this before.  If it's going to fail, I'd rather it not be on a project I've spent the last 6 hours sweating over... but sculpted dragon handles would be soooooo cool.  And a huge pain in the butt.

Once the handles were cut out of the book, I glued the pages together in 5-page bundles.  The amount you'll need is dependent on how thick you want your handles to be.  Keep track of the number of bundles you use in order to keep the handles perfectly even.  (I didn't.  I paid the price.) I placed the small glued bundles under a couple of heavy books and let them dry completely.

Putting on the handle attachments

I cut one page of the book into several strips the approximate width of the handles.  I cut them into small sections of about an inch or two and glued one to itself around the metal attachment.  I then glued the little strip of paper in between two of my 5-sheet sections.  I added another strip of paper that covered the bottom bit of hardware in between each layer of 5 until I built up the bottom by several sheets.  I added a final 5- page U section to each side to give it a consistent look across the entire handle.  I left the entire thing to dry under a couple of books overnight.

Once everything was dry, it was time to do some trimming to the bottom and start sanding away.  I finally got a new dremmel, so the sanding didn't take as long as it has in the past.  During this process, the handles loosened a bit but didn't come apart completely.  I sanded until I was happy with them and then put some white glue along the outside and inside edges, put the handles under a couple of heavy books, and let them dry.

I used Mod Podge as a sealant because it will help the durability of the entire piece.  I did 3 applications of glue, letting them dry completely between coats.  This took quite a bit of time since I had to do the sides one at a time.  After that, they're ready to be attached to the purse!

Re-making the cover

When I was doing research for this project, I ran across a Moleskine notebook with a really cool dragon motif.  I liked the idea, and decided to do my own version of a dragon snoozing on piles of his gold. Somewhere else I'd seen a simple cover with Bilbo's initials, and I decided to incorporate that at the bottom.

Of course, since I don't have calligraphy tools, I'd have to do it the bass-ackwards way of drawing the letters out as if I was drawing a typographical font.  I couldn't get them to work out when I was drawing the B's as a set, so I did one and used that template twice.

I taped the sketch to the cover and then used my hobby knife to score the top of the book cover lightly with my image.  I had to re-use the calligraphy "B", which was a bit more challenging the 2nd time, but I was able to get enough of the gist to be able to paint.  I removed the paper and took one of my dotting tools and made the lines deeper and more pronounced to give the cover more of an embossed look.  Once I did that, I painted the entire cover purple.  This took several coats of paint, and it didn't really like to stick to the smooth surface well.  If I do this particular book cover again, I'll look into some sort of primer before I paint.

Once the cover was a consistent purple, I used a gold and metallic red nail polish to fill in the lines that I'd embossed earlier to give it a nice shine.  Once that dried, I sealed the entire cover with a layer of Mod Podge to protect my work.

Next week: The return of Mano the Sewing Machine!  But since you asked so nicely, here's a preview of the finished handles attached to the book cover.