Fancy Books

I have had my Bible for about fourteen years. It has been with me to seven countries, gone through four YWAM Training courses including a one year Bible school and served me well for two years as a Bible teacher. The thing is used! It is marked up, highlighted, and written in. It falls open to my favorite passages and all of the silvery, shiny, page edging stuff is worn off. The cover fell off once so I duct taped it back together. If I had known when I bought it that it was a lifetime investment, I probably would have spent more on it but I didn't so I am having to get creative to keep the thing together. Duct tape isn't really the look that I want. And I don't know if any of you are like this but I am just lost in another Bible, I need mine so I am going to make it last! Several years ago I covered my Bible with a greenish-grey suede and used silver clasps to close it. It was pretty cool and it lasted about ten years. The clasp fell off a few days ago though so I decided to go ahead and recover the whole thing.

I decided to use faux leather which, in retrospect, was probably not the best choice as it is a bit heavy and hard to work with. I like the look of the finished project but it is a bit bulky and therefore looks a little "homemade". Oh well, it will definitely last a while! At least until I decide to recover it with something different. Here is how I did it in case any of you want to attempt covering a book. I used to do journals a lot and there are so many fun things you can do.

First of all, cut the fabric to fit your book with about two inches of overlap on each side. Glue to the cover of the book. I used fabric glue for this.

Fold the corners over and glue down to the inside cover of the book. I used hot glue for this.

The fold the sides over and hot glue them down.

Oh, and I cut slits to line up with the spine of the book and did that part separately.
Next, I punched holes in the side flap of the book with a leather hole puncher.

I strung leather cording through the three holes and hot glued the cord to the inside of the book.

Then I cut a piece of leather to fit the inside of the book and glued it down to cover all of that mess. You can see from the previous picture that I already did that to the front flap.

Then I strung the three leather cords through a decorative button and braided them together to make a long cord that can wrap around the book to hold it closed.

Here is the finished project!