How to Make Book Pumpkin:
I've seen a lot of book art recently, from book wreaths to wallpaper to monograms carved out of a book.
Below is a book monogram I purchased at a local home furnishings shop, Elm & Iron in Clintonville. If your really talented, like my friend Megan, you can make your own with an X-acto knife.
As a bibliophile this seems oxymoron to want to deface books. However, I think of it more as infusing a love of books throughout your home--whether it's the books on your bookshelf, or in this case a seasonal book pumpkin. Plus there are some really poor works of literature out there that I wouldn't mind unbinding to create something new.
There were a lot of very depressing books in high school they made us suffer through that I have no qualms crafting with--Grapes of Wrath and Frankenstein to name a few. However, if you don't want to get in a debate about the literary merits of these tomes, you can always just pop by the dollar store and pick up Blood Father like I did to make your book pumpkin.
The first step is to remove the cover and make a template out of cardstock. Your template should look like the shape of a pumpkin bisected down the vertical line of symmetry and should be the same width as your book or smaller.
The next step is to trace your template on the book cover and use a pair of scissors or X-acto knife to cut the pages in that shape. I found I could cut up to about 20 pages at a time with a pair of scissors.
After cutting a section of 20 or so pages, fold them over and continue to use the template to trace the shape to maintain the same size.
Continue until you've cut through the entire book. Stand the book upright and fluff the pages so they stand open. Then hot glue the spine of the blinding together as well as the first page of the book to the last page, closing the pumpkin. Add a short stick to the top with hot glue to complete the pumpkin. If you find the pages are fanning open evenly, you can add paperclips at the top near the stick to hold some of the pages open.
Book pumpkins was also a craft organized by my local library for a fall adult programing, so librarians seem to endorse this too!
I also created a bat banner for Halloween to join the book pumpkins, out of some black card stock and a free template online. I sewed the bats together with a large needle and some black & white baker's twine.
Now we're ready for trick-or-treaters!
Anne with an E