Ever wish you had some of those gorgeous coffee table books or that your books were beautiful enough to be on display? We do too, but since we like some of our not-so-visually-stunning books, we decided to just make them prettier so they are finally display-worthy. We have a small collection of bar books in our living room, and thanks to a sale on some incredible paper, they are now covered in oh-so-pretty maps and birds.
Not that it’s not classy to have a book on “shots” displayed in your living room, but as much as we hate to admit it, we are now quite a few years removed from college so it’s time to bring a little more sophistication to our book collection. Without sacrificing the need for an easy to find party drink recipe every now and again.
How did we make it happen? Well, we went grade school on those books. Remember when you had to cover your textbooks in school to protect them for next year’s students? Well that’s not just for fourth graders anymore. Thanks to a tip we saw on an HGTV show over the weekend, we were inspired to take our design up a notch and cover our books in beautiful paper. Not those brown paper bags from back in the day. Although, we did start with brown paper for a test as we refreshed our memory on how to fold the paper to cover the books.
Then we broke out three large sheets of decorative paper that we snagged on sale and with a living social deal at a local art store. We picked out a few vintage map patterns along with a fun bird pattern to beautify our books.
Then Dain used his ruler and x-acto knife to cut the paper to the correct size, leaving enough room to fold the edges on all sides.
After folding down the top and bottom edges, he folded in the sides making a nice little sleeve to slip the front and back covers into.
The result is a sophisticated cover that fits perfectly.
After repeating his method five more times, all six of our bar books were paper clad and ready to be put on display.
Quite an improvement over where we started with all of our random books between our brickends (that we also DIYed here).
I actually like them so much that I have more plans for covering books because we seem to have a small collection of books that sits out quite often (like Dain’s Reader’s Digest Do-It Yourself Manual that is totally practically but totally ugly to look at all the time). If you’re looking for a way to class up your book collection, try some easy book covers. These would look great for a cookbook collection in a kitchen. If only we had room to display those.
I’ve started doing with this with some of my books too. At first I felt a bit silly, but seeing them ‘work’ with my decor everyday has definitely convinced me the book covering is the go