Here Are My Vintage Books 📖📚

By Sharmini Jayawardena

I had these two hard cover books that I’ve not opened for a good five to six years. I did not read them even when I first got them. For, their titles just made me put them in the back burner.

Ok. You’re wondering, what are the titles?!
One is, The Emotional Calendar: Understanding Seasonal Influences and Milestones to Become Happier, More Fulfilled and in Control of Your Life by J. Sharp.
The other one 👉🏽the upside of irrationality. The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely

It’s all about decluttering, year ending, and Boxing Day, nearing 😄, and all of that. So, I decided to declutter, re-purpose, up-cycle and re-style starting with these two books.

Here’s what I did – I searched for images of Vintage Books, and found at random, these two titles of which I knew nothing about, up until now 😁.
1. Candle Lightin’ Time by Paul Laurence Dunbar.
2. The Friendship of Art by Bliss Carman.

Amazing 😉 Amazing! Amazing!

Now, these are books I would truly like to read, I found out, by checking them out online.

For one reason, I’m doing a lot of candle 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 lighting these days just because it’s the Season for all things bright and wonderful 😁🤩🎄🤶🎅

To my utter amazement I found Paul Laurence Dunbar to be a black American writer and poet, writing ✍️ poetry of the Antebellum period of the southern states of America. I’ve been reading up on how the American Constitution came to be and I feel this would be a great 👍🏽 read, however, saddening.

William Bliss Carman, is a very colourful “Canadian poet who lived most of his life in the United States”, with an equally impressive pedigree! Even more amazing!

The cover images of these two books said Vintage all over 😁 and I promptly got down to working on them.
1. I had the two covers printed according to the size of the books I was now destroying 😁.
2. Ripped off the spine of the books. They came off in strands which I saved for a hopefully future project.
3. Painted the covers of the books which were a dark green and deep blue in white and gold and left them to dry.
4. Painted the pages right round in gold and dried them. Then brushed off with hints of white paint.
5. Pasted the cover prints on the front covers of the books and left them to dry.
6. Then, I sandpapered parts of the front cover and the spine and applied white and gold paint 🎨 on the front cover and spine at random.

On the Candle Linghtin’ Time, I did some decoupage as well. (or what I believe is decoupage), on the back cover, which by now had turned a beautiful light blue, with the gold adding a nice shabby chic touch to it.

For the decoupage I used two halves of a white paper doily.

I placed them like so ⬇️ on the back cover after having applied white glue on the reverse side. I then smoothened the surface of the motif off with the clean handle of a paint brush, as I didn’t have a sponge 🧽.

The finished product was quite alluring I must say 😁 Although, I have not come across decoupage being done ✅ on book covers, so far. Usually it is seen on furniture.