Harry Potter style Hogwarts Library Spellbooks

Step 8 Weathering

At this stage, you can stop being careful!

You can go as far as you want at this stage, either keep the book looking fairly tidy, or you can really go to town and make it look like hundereds of careless Hogwarts students have trashed it over the years.

I started the weathering by ripping up the cover on the corners of the book, as well as bending the corners up to add some creases. Then I scraped an old metal ruler over the cover and edges of the book to remove the top layer of paint and reveal the weave of the cover. 

I then used a combination of water and PVA glue, combined with sawdust collected from behind my table saw to really dirty up the book.

Use a stiff brush to really work the grime and dirt into the creases and cracks. The important thing to remember here is to not let it completely dry at this stage! Use an old cloth to wipe away the excess grime to leave a nice aged thin layer of dust and watermarks. 

I think liquid stains are particularly appropriate for Potions books. use coffee dregs or watered down paints to make "potion" spills.  My wife genuinly spilled a cup of tea over one of these while I was working on it, she rushed to clean it up but I told her to leave it as it looked perfect!

Comments

[mee-mee]

 that poor book...

[maeve]

I did this to one of my favourite books... a really cheap, hardcover version of Pride and Predjudice. It looked really tacky and mock old, so I did this to it, and re-applied the title. Looks cool now, and it's still useable, pus attracts some funny glances. When I told one freind what I did to it, she was like, "What the Hell?" so now I just tell people I found it in my attic!
It was funny then, a week later I was helpingmy granny clear out her attic, and we found a book just like it, that was a medical encyclopadiea that had been hers when she began nursing! It looks just as cool, but isn't half as enjoyable to read!

[bassplry]

 where can you get one of these books if you don't have a dump near you?

[gingerpete50]

You could try charity shops/thrift stores, or maybe a second hand bookshop.

[thepelton]

I have been working at Goodwill, and there are a lot of books in their stores for cheap that could be turned into a Hogwarts Potion book, or some other thing.  There are a lot of hardbound collections of old Reader's Digest articles that can be found out there.

[Rhamza]

The only thing though, you may not want to go into the second hand book shop and telling them what you are going to do with the books. They will not sell you anything if you say you are going to deface the book and put your own title on it. just so you know in advanced. ^.^

This is a pretty cool idea, thanks for sharing!

[bullzebub]

might not be completely true. they might have ruined books too you know...

[Rhamza]

Well yes. I suppose that some stores could have ruined books that were in a box of books from an estate or something like that. It is just that every second hand book store I go into, the shop keepers are all in love with books. That is why they work there. I was just meaning that you might not be able to buy books from the store if you tell them that you are doing to 'ruin' a book by carving into the binding and cover. Just something to think about when going into a used book store, that's all. :)