Book Craft Christmas Ornament — Sum of their Stories Craft Blog

make a christmas ornament with old book pages

Yay! It’s Pinterest Challenge time again! I love love love this challenge, I join a group of lovely bloggers and we all take something from one of our Pinterest boards and actually give it a go. We’ll never be able to get to everything we pin but this challenge is a good prompt to at least try some of them! The challenge is hosted by My Pinterventures.

This month I’ve been inspired by this lovely Literary Christmas Ornament from Reviews, Chews and How-To’s. We are big Harry Potter fans in our house so this idea caught my eye straight away, in fact I picked it as a feature on our Handmade Monday weekly link up a few weeks ago.

I’ve been spray painting some of our old, tired looking baubles recently (you can see the results here) so to try this idea rather than upcycling more old baubles I dug out a couple of flat wooden heart shapes that I had in my stash. I first used these YEARS ago for some personalised gift tags - see them here!

To make a Book Craft Christmas Ornament like mine you will need:

Wooden heart hanging shapes
Pages of an old book - you want pages which mention Christmas
Mod Podge
Sparkle Mod Podge
Star table confetti
Tiny Christmassy motif - something like the holly I cut from an old Christmas card is ideal
Ribbon or twine to hang

You’ll also need:

A paintbrush
Scissors and/or a craft knife

First tear some Christmassy words or phrases from your book pages, what you can do will depend very much on what book you are using. I had an old copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban which had been dropped in the bath (ops!) This is a great choice for a Christmas ornament or two as in Chapter 11, ‘The Firebolt’ there are about 6 pages covering a Christmas at Hogwarts so I had plenty to choose from.

From the remaining bits of pages cut out roughly the shape of your wooden heart.

Cover the wooden shape with a layer of regular Mod Podge and lay the roughly cut piece of book page on top and smooth gently. Cut it more accurately - a craft knife makes this easier and then cover with another coat of Mod Podge.

Pop a few of your torn words and phrases on top at an angle. Use as many or as few as takes your fancy. Cover these torn elements with a little more Mod Podge and then leave to dry.

Once it’s completely dry, repeat on the other side. I fancied an illustration on the reverse, my damaged copy of Harry Potter had no illustrations apart from the Hogwart’s coat of arms right at the front so I used that on the second side. Again leave to dry completely.

To finish cover with Sparkle Mod Podge. This stuff is amazing, so so sparkly but mess free. Of course you can go old school and use regular Mod Podge and glitter if you prefer. Or no glitter if that’s not your thing.

The Sparkle Mod Podge works like a regular glue as well as adding sparkle so you can use it to add any further embellishments too. I added a few teeny tiny stars and a holly spring saved from an old Christmas card.

It doesn’t look very sparkly in this photo but as it dries it goes clear and the glitter really shows.

If you’ve covered the hanging hole then just poke it through again with a pin or needle.

Then you can add twine or thin ribbon to hang your ornament.

I turned one of the book craft ornaments into a personalised card, (I’ve blanked out the personalisation of course as they’ve not been given their card yet!

To make the card I just printed the message onto card then layered it up with some Christmassy paper. I punched a hole through all the layers so that I could poke the hanging thread of the ornament through the hole. I secured it on the inside with a bit of festive washi tape. This way it’s easy for the recipients to remove and hang on their tree. I cut out a heart shaped bit of the Christmassy paper to pop under the ornament, so that when they do remove it the card still looks pretty!

The other one I made I plan to use as a gift tag, then they can hang it on the tree afterwards.

So much fun to make and perfect for the book worm in your life.

I’m thinking if you could find an old battered copy of a Christmassy book then you could make a whole load of these ornaments really inexpensively, a whole literary tree full or as gifts for everyone you know.

The nice thing about the Harry Potter books is that they all mention Christmas on at least a couple of pages. Other books like The Grinch, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or A Christmas Carol would be fabulous. Even Jane Austen’s Emma mentions Christmas on a few pages. You can probably think of loads more.