#36--Playing with Trashy Romance Novels

Trashy Romance Novel
and Styro-wreath in their
original forms.

I have an obsession with trashy romance novels. I love them. I've literally read 100's of them (Which consequently are sitting around my house needing a new home, so if you'd like them, please let me know. My husband will thank you.).  When I first heard about the altered book phenomena, I both cringed and got super excited at the same time. I was brought up to respect books, could I destroy one? After months of deliberation on this very subject I discovered that, yes, I can destroy a book, but only one that I've already read and think stinks. So there's that. For this project, I used Friendly Persuasion by Dawn Atkins.  I've read many of her other works and think they're just fine, but she missed the mark on this one. Sorry Dawn...

To date this is the best project that I have done for this blog.  It's been done several times by many people (my Aunt Janet, this blog, and my fave book Playing with Books). Obviously, I made mine heart shaped.  I got a heart shaped styro-wreath from this place the other day when we were buying Mardi Gras decorations for the bar and was very excited to get started. On a side note, I can barely move because of the evil progesterone shots that my RE insists on torturing me with, so sitting around for a few hours this afternoon working on this project was quite therapeutic.

Supplies

• Styro-wreath (I think this is the best kind that you can use for this project, I don't think you'll get the same effect with grapevine wreaths.)
• Trashy romance novel or some other book that can be sacrificed for this great cause
• The evil hot-glue gun and extra glue sticks (I used a lot of them for this project)
• You might need an Exacto knife or scissors. I didn't, but it will depend on the type of book that you cut up. 

A Pictorial Tutorial

Take the cover off your book. Save it, you  just might find a way to re-use it later.  Tear the pages out carefully, this is where most people will want to use a knife or scissors. Since my butt hurts, I wasn't getting up to get that, so I did without and it worked just fine.

Roll each page, you don't have to be neat about it. I rolled starting with a corner and tried to make a cone shape. When I first started, I stapled the rolls together. This is quite an unnecessary waste of staples and I stopped that practice real quick.  I did secure the ends with a dab of the evil hot glue to keep them together.  

Use the evil glue gun to glue the cones to the back of the styro-wreath. I did this in stages, I would roll a few pages, then glue them to the wreath. When I ran out of rolls, I'd roll some more and so on and so on. 

Right side up. 

The blog mentioned above (ok, fine, HERE'S the link again) suggested letting the wreath sit under something heavy so that it would lay flat. This gave me more time to roll more pages...

The 2nd round. With the styro-wreath facing right side up, I folded the ends of the cones in and evil hot glued them. 

2nd round almost done. Notice my cat cave in the back? They LOVE that thing!

Round 3, similar to round 1, I folded the cones in this time and evil hot glued them onto the styro-wreath.

Finished product. I love it and I'm totally hanging this somewhere in my house. Even my husband loves it!

To switch it up a little, I could have dyed the edges of the book, either with an ink pad, paint or I think that even RIT dye would work. I shall try this on my next one to add a little more color and dimension to the project.