What can you make with an old damaged book? There are lots of craft ideas to upcycle and repurpose old books, most of them seem to use pages covered with type as the main feature of the new make. But what about books with lots of pictures or photographs? Here’s an idea to repurpose a heavily illustrated old book.

It’s time for the Sustainable Craft Challenge, when I join some of my creative friends and we each bring you a craft idea with a sustainable twist. This month our theme is REPURPOSE. Stay tuned at the end of this tutorial to check out all the creative repurposing ideas.

I had an old embroidery book with a missing cover, broken spine and all the pages falling apart. I do love embroidery but I have many books so didn’t need to keep this one for the patterns and ideas so I’ve given it a whole new life and repurposed it into a pretty garland.

This idea would work well with magazines, junk mail etc too if you don’t have an old book that’s falling apart.

How to repurpose an old book into a paper garland

To repurpose an old book into a paper garland you will need:

An old book
Large paper punches in various shapes (or a cutting machine)
Sewing machine and thread
2 short lengths of ribbon

Prepare the paper shapes

Start by punching a whole load of paper shapes from the pages of the old book. I used a 2” circle punch, a 1” circle punch, a flower punch and a scalloped circle punch.

If you have a die cutting machine or cricut then you could use that of course.

Sew the paper garland

Stack your paper shapes next to your sewing machine in the order you want them to appear in your garland. If your paper is very thin you might want to double them all up to make the garland a little stronger.

Set your sewing machine to a long straight stitch and change your needle to an old one. I keep an old needle especially for stitching paper.

Fold a short length of ribbon in half and place it between 2 paper shapes. Stitch through the paper/ribbon “sandwich” to secure it in place and then continue stitching placing the paper shapes under the presser foot and stitching straight across them as you go.

For some shapes I popped a smaller shape or two on top of a larger one, just to mix things up a bit.

Continue stitching and adding paper shapes until the garland is the length you want. Finish the end of the garland in the same way you started it, by inserting a folded ribbon between 2 shapes and stitching them in place.

I made my garland just over 2 metres, about 7 foot, which took 38 paper shapes. The large paper circles are 2 inches in diameter to give you an idea of the scale here.

I actually made a few of these garlands and have listed the extras in my Etsy shop, if you like them but don’t want to make your own.

Now let’s take a look at the other REPURPOSE themed projects shared by my creative colleagues for the Sustainable Craft Challenge:

Decor Craft Design : Repurpose Plastic Bottle Into Marble Vase

Our Good Life : The Art of Repurposing: Cups and Mugs

Purple Hues and Me: Restyle and Repurpose Pirouline Tin

Christine’s Crafts: Upcycle old Crockery into Fabulous DIY Garden Stepping Stones