9. Old book decorations

Say Halloween to me and instantly I conjure images of old gnarly faced hags bearing nice red juicy apples.  But buying red apples takes all the fun out of it plus what I do buy, I need for bobbing.  Instead get out the old book I warned you about earlier.

Now make sure if you're joining along, this isn't a special or first edition, it's not part of a set that you'll be able to sell or want to read again, and at this point I'm adding a disclaimer that it's your choice what book to use, it's not my fault :)

I've created all three of these out of a children's book about a cheer leading witch.

Now admittedly next time I do these I would make them slightly smaller, but my book was 5"width, so I went with that. I'd probably try cutting the outer margin off first, giving 3.5" or 4" max, as whatever size you start with will be slightly smaller than what you end up with, and these 5" books ended up huge.

Whatever size you decide - you need to remove the front cover and spine, leaving the glue attached, and count out 2 lots of 20 pages.

Next, square it off - fold the bottom corner up diagonally into the middle spine, giving you a square, draw your 'cut' line, unfold and cut all 40 pages. (I found by folding the pages up from the bottom you have less gaps for the chapter headings giving a nicer overall finish)









Fold each page in to the middle spine adding a tiny bit of glue to the underside as you go, this will help keep in any stray pages. 

Pick a design shape. 
You need to create a template no bigger than this half of the page, (with a 5" book your template should be no wider than 2.5) 
make sure that at least one point your design comes right to the folded edge 


As you can see above the cross lines are my waste around the cut line, but at the widest point I'm not cutting down the seam, this leaves the pages joined together, some will be accidentally cut which is why you need to glue each fold.

At around every 5 pages, slot in your template draw and cut round all 5 pages together, carry on going until complete.

Glue the 2 halves together to create a full shape.

Fluff the pages out to create a full standing circle.


Decorate with inks, pens and embossing powders: 
for the pumpkin I watered down some orange dylusions ink and painted on with a brush, around all the outside edges and one central face page, I drew out my pumpkin design and coloured the darker bits with a red pen, using Distress ink in black soot, I darkened the edges further.

The apple was inked in a similar way to the pumpkins, using highlighing glitter pen to create sheen around the edge and green pen with glitter for the surprise poison centre.

I have entered this into the Corrosive Challenge Blog for Halloween.

Hope you have as much fun as I did.

Jaz x