# Creepy books, Tomes and spell grimoires



## DogRedScottie (Aug 22, 2016)

Before you get started remember this is an ARTISTIC endeavor! No amount of instructions will give you what I did. Enjoy the process and make it your own and you will succeed at your project.

1. Get a hard bound book! Big books look great but the important thing here is that it should be expendable because we are going to ruin it for its original intended purpose








2. Burn the outside edges to help age the book. I used a blow torch, but any flame will do. Be careful not to burn the spine (it will cause the book to fall apart).








3. Dunk the book in a bucket of water to help age the pages (helps to put out the fire where you just BURNED it! lol) Dont SOAK the book through its unnecessary and takes forever to dry. 








4. Thoroughly dry the book by fanning out the pages letting them wrinkle. (dry them good to keep mold from growing)















5. Look the pages over for things that dont look right (glossy pages, inserts...) and tear them out! It will actually enhance the aged look if you dont hurt the spine. Maybe tear a few more 








6. Hot glue stuff/critters/bobbles to the front and back of the cover. You can hot glue pre-made letters to write things or use the hot glue gun to write stuff. GET ARTSY!















7. Use wrapping tissue to paper mache' the front and back cover making sure to squeeze out air pocket because they will rob you of your details. Two layers of paper was all I used.








8. Paint the front and back cover with dark brown craft paint. Any dark color works but I wanted mine to look a little like leather.








9. Rub and Buff the DRY brown paint to bring out details. If you are unfamiliar with "RUB & BUFF" you can use light colored craft paint rubbing a tiny bit over the covers with a towel that is dirty with the lighter color paint (not wet, too much ruins the effect).















10. Seal the new paint with "matte sealer" spray. (Home Depot/Michaels/Craft Stores)









11. DONE! lay it out where people can see your great work! And POST PICTURES!


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## Tannasgach (Nov 1, 2009)

Looks awesome! Thanks for the great tut.


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## DogRedScottie (Aug 22, 2016)

This is ART so get creative.

Dollar store FLAT plastic decorations work GREAT!


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## Eigengrau (Sep 4, 2013)

might give this a shot today


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## scarybella (Aug 4, 2010)

Very creative... but most importantly cheap. The finished book Looks awesome and far from cheap. Love it

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk


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## Hauntings by Design (Jan 2, 2010)

Great information thank you for sharing.


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## Tigpuppy (Oct 8, 2015)

Now I have a use for all my HUGE college textbooks!


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## Celestya22 (Oct 17, 2016)

Thank you for the tutorial and inspiration! I'm still planning to try and add some darker sections when I find a smaller brush, but here's mine so far. It's not as bright as it appears either. The dry-brush colour is an antique white mixed with a maple brown. The dark brown background is burnt umber.


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## Celestya22 (Oct 17, 2016)

What a difference!








Here's the finished book. I'm now debating drilling holes through the cover for LEDs for the skeleton's eyes. Thank you again for the great tutorial!!


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## Greenwick (Apr 25, 2013)

I love to make art with mod podged tissue paper and hot glue over the top of it. Never thought of doing it the other way around! This looks amazing, and is sparking tons of ideas for me.


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## Bryan316 (Oct 18, 2009)

I wanna do this, but to a brand new artist's sketchbook. With the really nice cotton pages. Then actually use it for drawing and sketching everything Halloween related.

It'll be cool to do evil ideas, in an evil book!


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## HallowFear (Aug 2, 2012)

Great Post!!

I love making books like this using all sorts of different techniques and media.

A good way to get free books is look for encyclopedias online on Kijiji or Craigslist etc. I have like two sets in my basement I got from Kijiji for free 

I will try to post some of my examples


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## Rigormortor (Sep 7, 2009)

Wow those books came out so old and vintage looking. I might have to give it a try..... very inspiring!


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## HallowFear (Aug 2, 2012)

Here are some of the ones I made using different techniques and media.


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## redd1981 (Sep 24, 2013)

Thank you for sharing. I am always looking for inexpensive and creative ways to decorate.


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## tomanderson (Dec 6, 2007)

WOW. There are some very clever techniques shown here!! THANK YOU


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## Sharonr3106 (Sep 8, 2014)

Great work and great idea


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## HauntedWyo (Apr 13, 2017)

Thanks for the great idea. I am wanting to make an open book for one of my witches to hold in her hands. I was thinking about making it from styrofoam, but I might be able to make something like this work instead. I would have to hallow out the pages to make it lighter though. Going to hit up yard sales and thrift stores to look for all sorts of supplies to make Halloween props with, or to use with props. I will definitely be keeping my eyes open for a large book.


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## tomanderson (Dec 6, 2007)

I love the creepy book tips and pointers! A little practice can yield some remarkable results.....


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## DamageGirl (Apr 23, 2017)

Amazing. I really liked the Serpentine book. it had that old style gritty look, but was still very cool. Good job!


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## Spirits Vineyard (Oct 23, 2016)

So I have this really large, leatherbound sketch book that I'd like to turn into a spell book. And by spell book, I mean an actual spell book, not a faux one that you can't open. I can't take the book apart, so I need to figure out a way to age the paper....I was thinking about spritzing the pages one by one with tea or coffee, letting them dry in between. But my real predicament is how to actually get the spells onto the pages, with all the various artwork to go with it. I found many spell "pages" online that I would love to transfer onto the pages of this book, but the paper is too thick to do any kind of tracing. Anyone have any ideas how I can accomplish this? I found a few macabre stamps that I can buy to enhance the pages to make them look more authentic, but I'd like to figure out a way to get the actual spells/lettering without killing my hand and wrist by penning everything by hand.

If you have any ideas, please share them!


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## RCIAG (Jul 19, 2010)

Transfer paper would work to transfer images to the paper.

You can find the paper at craft store & online, just google "transfer paper." You basically draw on one side then turn it over & rub the picture on to the other item or page you want it on.

How to use the paper:


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## RCIAG (Jul 19, 2010)

You could also print, cut out & age those pages you like & just glue them to the pages of the book just using Elmer's Glue. Gluing paper to paper sort of wrinkles the paper so that would help with the look. 

Also if you'd like some frayed paper edges take a hand held grater to the edges. That's what I did with the spells books I've done but I was using it on the covers of the books I used & those were cardboard covers which aged nicely.


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## Spirits Vineyard (Oct 23, 2016)

I may try out your second suggestion. I watched a few videos on tracing and I think that method will be so labor intensive, considering I am probably looking at 50 different spell pages, at a minimum. It's one thing to just be artwork, but there will be a lot of text too, and with the trace method, you have to do the tracing several times. I'll never get it done by Halloween if I do that! LOL. Plus like you said, gluing paper onto paper may help with the aging process. I may also try doing some of them by hand, hopefully making it look/feel more authentic!

When I get to starting on this, I'll post pics as I go along!


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## RCIAG (Jul 19, 2010)

I just recently did a thing at work with baby pictures & when I glued the copied photos to some other colored paper the whole thing wrinkled up. It was just plain 20lb. copy paper glued to 20lb. purple paper & they got seriously wrinkled. So that would help with the overall feel of the book.


Here's what one looked like. You can see the wrinkles in this one. I just brushed Elmers on the back of the pic & stuck it to the purple paper & let it dry. All of the ones I did looked like this more or less. It just wrinkled right up. FTR, this little guy is not me & he's now bald by choice. I had one of those stupid baby bonnet pics.


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## RCIAG (Jul 19, 2010)

Here's my pic. You can't see the wrinkles quite as well but mine curled up on me, I had to press it under the phone book to get it flat.


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## HauntedWyo (Apr 13, 2017)

RCIAG said:


> I just recently did a thing at work with baby pictures & when I glued the copied photos to some other colored paper the whole thing wrinkled up. It was just plain 20lb. copy paper glued to 20lb. purple paper & they got seriously wrinkled. So that would help with the overall feel of the book.
> 
> 
> Here's what one looked like. You can see the wrinkles in this one. I just brushed Elmers on the back of the pic & stuck it to the purple paper & let it dry. All of the ones I did looked like this more or less. It just wrinkled right up. FTR, this little guy is not me & he's now bald by choice. I had one of those stupid baby bonnet pics.


RCIAG, just for future reference. If you want to keep copied photos from curling or wrinkling use a glue stick instead of regular glue. You can also find acid free glue sticks in the scrap booking aisles. Sometimes wrinkling is the look people are going for and sometimes they want it smooth. Not sure what you were planning with your baby photos or if wrinkles mattered or not.


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## Spirits Vineyard (Oct 23, 2016)

I thought about doing that....gluing the pages on....but here's the thing. This book has 150 pages in it, and while you can't tell from the picture, it's already quite large AND heavy. I don't want to add anymore thickness to it, and any little thing I add to it is going to make it bulge out. I'm not even sure I'm going to try and age the paper either. Today I pulled out 2 pages and did a test run on spritzing with tea and coffee (first tea, but my tea wasn't dark enough so then I had to switch to coffee!) and the problem is that this paper is extremely porous. It's like a very thick matte construction paper, and it just soaked up every drop of water that hit it. The one page I did is still currently drying so I don't know exactly how it's foing to turn out just yet. But I did realize that this peocess is going to take a very long time and in the end make this book smell like a Starbucks shop, which I'm not sure I want. So I may just forego it altogether. I'm looking into a dry process though....I read a few things about aging with powder paint so I may give that a try.


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## RCIAG (Jul 19, 2010)

HauntedWyo said:


> RCIAG, just for future reference. If you want to keep copied photos from curling or wrinkling use a glue stick instead of regular glue. You can also find acid free glue sticks in the scrap booking aisles. Sometimes wrinkling is the look people are going for and sometimes they want it smooth. Not sure what you were planning with your baby photos or if wrinkles mattered or not.


I was going to use my glue stick because it would've been easier & faster but when I went to get my glue stick & it had dried up like a raisin!! It was one of those that was purple & went on purple so you could see where you put glue, but dried clear. I guess I haven't used it much lately! It was about a 1/2" wide & dried up to 1/4". It was kinda funny.

So I was left with my ginormous gallon of Elmers. No one cared or even mentioned the wrinkles & I ended up not cutting all the pics up anyway. Some had references like cars & TV that gave away the years so it made some a little easier to guess so I just left them full sized.

Maggiesvinyard, sounds like this book is more of a next year/long term project than one you could get done quickly for this year. Good luck & let us know what you end up doing. 

You could always do a couple quickie books easily for this year & keep this as your "next Halloween" project & work on it a bit each month.


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## Kwll2112 (Sep 14, 2016)

maggiesvineyard said:


> I thought about doing that....gluing the pages on....but here's the thing. This book has 150 pages in it, and while you can't tell from the picture, it's already quite large AND heavy. I don't want to add anymore thickness to it, and any little thing I add to it is going to make it bulge out. I'm not even sure I'm going to try and age the paper either. Today I pulled out 2 pages and did a test run on spritzing with tea and coffee (first tea, but my tea wasn't dark enough so then I had to switch to coffee!) and the problem is that this paper is extremely porous. It's like a very thick matte construction paper, and it just soaked up every drop of water that hit it. The one page I did is still currently drying so I don't know exactly how it's foing to turn out just yet. But I did realize that this peocess is going to take a very long time and in the end make this book smell like a Starbucks shop, which I'm not sure I want. So I may just forego it altogether. I'm looking into a dry process though....I read a few things about aging with powder paint so I may give that a try.


Would it be easier to buy or make a leather cover and bind pages into it? Without being to take out the pages, perhaps you can simply draw/write on one page per day to fill it up with spells and drawings? It would take a long time, but if done well, could end up being a really cool prop.

When my wife made the spell book for our witches room last year, we faced a similar issue. Although, we weren't concerned with ruining the book, as we started with a used book. What she did was to print the pages we wanted, aged them, and then glued them into the book. We did enough where you could page through them a little, but not the entire book. We had to remove some pages to keep the bulk down, and if you looked too hard at the book, you could tell what we did. Overall, it worked for us, as the end result was good, and it didn't take too much time.

To age the paper, she let each page soak in a coffee stain and then baked the pages in the oven to dry. Together, it produced a nice aging. I also took a propane torch to the page edges on both the existing pages and the ones we added. The charring added to the effect.


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## Spirits Vineyard (Oct 23, 2016)

Kwll2112 said:


> Would it be easier to buy or make a leather cover and bind pages into it? Without being to take out the pages, perhaps you can simply draw/write on one page per day to fill it up with spells and drawings? It would take a long time, but if done well, could end up being a really cool prop.
> 
> When my wife made the spell book for our witches room last year, we faced a similar issue. Although, we weren't concerned with ruining the book, as we started with a used book. What she did was to print the pages we wanted, aged them, and then glued them into the book. We did enough where you could page through them a little, but not the entire book. We had to remove some pages to keep the bulk down, and if you looked too hard at the book, you could tell what we did. Overall, it worked for us, as the end result was good, and it didn't take too much time.
> 
> To age the paper, she let each page soak in a coffee stain and then baked the pages in the oven to dry. Together, it produced a nice aging. I also took a propane torch to the page edges on both the existing pages and the ones we added. The charring added to the effect.


Since I've already invested a little money in the supplies to help me get everything onto the pages, I think I'm going to go that route. I have a couple different methods I'm going to experiment with.....

- Tracing the stuff right onto the pages using a lightbox (they have really slim ones that I can just slide underneath the pages

- Printing on transparency film and then transferring that onto the pages with a gel medium

- Age with a dry paint

It's definitely gonna take a while since i'll probably do a page or 2 (or 3 or 4) at a time, but like you said, once it's all said and done, it will be a pretty cool prop!

Yours looks awesome by the way! I may do the same with a torch at the end. The leather cover actually comes off.....it's more like a really rigid dust cover jacket, so I can take it off before I take a torch to it. I could potentially unbind the whole thing to age the paper, but I'm gonna see what kind of effect I can get with the dry paint first.


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## RCIAG (Jul 19, 2010)

I can't wait to see your results maggiesvinyard. Don't rush it either, do it properly the way you want to do it. If you try to get it done for this year it may not come out right so take your time to get it just right.

If you need something for this year there's plenty of tutorials all over the internet & in this forum on how to do quickie ones.


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## Spirits Vineyard (Oct 23, 2016)

RCIAG said:


> I can't wait to see your results maggiesvinyard. Don't rush it either, do it properly the way you want to do it. If you try to get it done for this year it may not come out right so take your time to get it just right.
> 
> If you need something for this year there's plenty of tutorials all over the internet & in this forum on how to do quickie ones.



I will definitely be taking my time! I'm a web designer by day, so I'm actually looking forward to doing something by hand instead of the computer! I used to do a lot of calligraphy when I was younger, but that was the extent of my artistic hand. I'm going to see if I can resurrect that hand to do some of the pages for the writings....if the whole transparency transfers don't work out.

I'm ok if I don't get it done for this year. I actually have one of those animated spellbooks that I got from Spirit Halloween that's pretty cool. I haven't put out yet since I got it at the end of the season, so it'll actually give me a reason to use it, since it's my only spellbook prop as of right now.

Now I need to get cracking on creating the electronic version of my pages. Do you (or anyone else) have any recommendations for where I can get cool (free) graphics? I think I have the graphic fairy and picmonkey bookmarked, but if there are any other ones that I should check out, let me know!


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## misskitty1222 (Sep 30, 2013)

HallowFear said:


> Here are some of the ones I made using different techniques and media.
> View attachment 397745
> 
> 
> ...


Ohhh, but how did u get that leather skin look on that first book? That is awesome!


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## HallowFear (Aug 2, 2012)

The first one is latex glue. 
We have this glue we use at work it is latex based, I am sure any liquid latex will do.
I used some cheese cloth stretched out on the cover, the spine is just latex applied smoothly 

The last book was made with the same stuff just using different tecniques


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