Most people wouldn't expect a librarian to destruct a book, but this project was my favorite this year. I found this tutorial, How to Make a Secret Hollow Book, and started gathering books from the thrift store.
This project was pretty minimal on supplies needed, but cutting and hollowing the books took plenty of our time. Following the directions, we made a wash with Elmer's glue and water. Using water in the glue enabled the mixture to soak into the pages so they would stick together. We glued the outside of the books and put something heavy (the letterpress) on top of them for a few hours while the glue dried. We put waxed paper in the front of each book to keep the front from sticking to the body of the book.
We drew lines 1/2" from the edges and began to cut out the pages. Mr used a box cutter and I used the craft knife, and neither knife got through more than 10-15 pages at once so hollowing the books took about an hour each. Once we got down to a page we liked near the bottom, we stopped and tried to clean up the cut edge a little.
This project made a paper explosion mess all over our house. We tried to contain it to the kitchen, but little bits of paper spread quickly.
Once each book was hollowed, we painted the inside cut edges with the glue wash and squished the books again for a few more hours. There was a little more cleaning up after the glue dried, but that's pretty much it. It surprised me in the end how light the books were once they had been hollowed out.
It's much harder for me to choose projects for the men in our lives, and this was this year's guy gift. In the end, we made five books, and everyone seemed to think they were cool.
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