Book Page Canvases and Sole Hope

I posted a while back about being excited to get started on my kitchen wall art and showed a little preview of some of the supplies I got:

After pondering how I wanted to give “texture” to the background of my canvases, I ended up deciding to cover them with book pages! Sorry Uncle Tom’s Cabin, you had to die for the greater good 🙂

I took the book apart by first removing the covers and as much of the binding as I could {it was already falling apart anyways.} I then took the pages out either one at a time or in small chunks… it actually went surprisingly fast. The most tedious part is making sure there’s no glue left on the edges.

To “glue” the pages down I used my homemade “Mod Podge” {1 part Elmer’s glue + 1 part water} – I’m sure the real stuff would work just the same. I found it easiest to start with the corners and work my way from one side of the canvas to the other. Here is an example of two types of corners I used:

As you can see the pages are different angles and overlap each other.

For the other type of corner, I put the page on a diagonal, let a good portion hang off the edge, and cut it at the corner. I then wrapped one side down and secured the back with tape. {I used masking tape for all edged that wrapped around the canvas}

I then folded the extra triangular “tab”down and wrapped the other side around the canvas.

From there I just worked from left to right making sure to keep the angles of the papers different. As I laid down each page, I smoothed out any wrinkles as best as possible. I should also note that unless the page wrapped around to the back, I cut the titles of the top {somehow titles like “Tom’s New Master” didn’t seem appropriate to be catching people’s eyes.}

After I had all the surfaced covered in book pages, I then coated the whole thing in a layer of the glue mix, smoothing out any bubbles with my fingers. You’ll notice it looks super wrinkly when wet, but it actually dried pretty darn smooth! I repeated this process 6 times… I’d say each one took around an hour.

While these babies were drying, I worked on my sketches for the layouts. The canvases are 16″x20″ so I used that scale on grid paper. {Thanks to all you lovelies who helped me decide on coffee as my theme!}

I debated adding “saucers” under the cups, but I just didn’t like how the looked. After I had each of my coffees drawn, I cut them out and arranged them in the order they’ll be on the wall {this will also help with my color selection later for each cup}

I debated whether or not to show this, but I didn’t start with the grid paper first thing… I had to scratch it out on paper first so I could decide what I wanted, and then I moved to the actual scaled drawings… o the creative process 🙂

I still couldn’t decide if I wanted coloured cups or not so I did a quick “sample” and concluded that colour is the way to go!

My original thought for the lettering was that I would choose my font and then copy the words by hand while looking at my computer. The font I decided on however is a little more complex than I had originally pictured…. so long story short I printed the letters out in the appropriate size on cardstock and I am currently in the process of cutting them out. {They’ll go on before I do the coffee.}

Which brings me to my next topic. A while back one of my bloggy buddies Natalie @ Take the Cannoli posted on an organization called Sole Hope {you can read her post here.} Sole Hope is an organization that works to provide shoes to children in impoverished nations.

{Sole Hope gallery}

{Hopefully it helps!} To see the rest of this project as well as many of the other totally awesome items being donated, be sure to check out the raffle coming up and purchase a ticket… it’s just $1 and it’s for such a great cause!