Table Numbers - Gold Book Tutorial

When I was a kid my mum used to make these amazing golden books called memory books. They were apparantly quite popular in the 80's. I had one on my dresser for ages and ages, until at some point in my teenage years when I thought I was too cool for things like that.

For our table numbers, I suggested to H2B that we could make some of these vintage-inspired gold books for something unique and interesting. We would place the table number on one side and a picture of us on another.

The books are quite involved and will take a long time to do, so you might want to ask for help if you have any crafty friends. Thankfully I had one of my beautiful friends to help out and my mum & sister helped out with the initial steps. If you do have the large amount of man-hours available to make these, it will probably cost less than buying wooden table numbers or something similar.

What you will need:

• Clag glue, PVA glue or similar. One large bottle will do approximately 5 books.
• Old, hardback books
• Spray paint in your desired colours
• Various Paint brushes - including some cheap thick ones for gluing
• Decorative materials
• Pictures, if wanted
• Tacky craft glue, double-sided tape or whatever other adhesive you want to use for the decorations

Step 1:
Gather some old books together. My mum sourced mine for free from someone who was getting rid of them for free. Any old hardback book will be fine - op shops should sell them for a few cents each. Try to find ones that are still intact and not falling apart. They should be roughly the same size unless you want varying sizes.

Step 2:
Rip some pages out so that the book is not over-full. We alternated between keeping 10 pages followed by ripping 5 out. Try to rip the pages out neatly and without leaving much paper attached to the spine.

Step 3:

Divide the book into rough quarters. Glue down the front and back quarters completely. To do this, simply apply glue to the entire page and stick it to the page next to it. Start by gluing the 1st pages to the covers, and so on and so forth until you reach the middle quarters. You can use a ruler to make sure the glued pages are smooth. Once you have reached the middle quarters, glue only the ends to the pages beneath, lining it up slightly inward every-time as you go so that you get a nice curve to the pages. LEAVE the very middle 4 pages of the book free - DO NOT glue these pages. Leave the books at least overnight to dry.




Step 4:
Spray paint the entire book (including front/back cover) in your desired colour. The lighter you apply the spray paint, the more of the original wording you will see underneath. I spray painted the books so that some parts had more words showing than others.  Leave to dry.

Spray paint anything else you want at the same time. We spray painted some small cardboard hearts that I had lying around, as well as an old hair clip decoration, paper corner inserts, and other things.

Step 5: 
Start applying decorations. I went and bought a damask-style stencil (you can get stencils from most craft stores, such as Spotlight, Lincraft, etc.) and painted the stencil over my books to give them more texture.

For my golden books, I painted the stencil on in silver paint, and later re-spray painted them in gold again to get a more subtle pattern. For my rose coloured books, I actually lightly mixed a gold and a silver paint to get a two-toned effect.









At this point, I had one of my amazing friends to help. We used a cheap roll of a thick lace (can be brought from craft stores or $2 stores) to make bookmarks (I cut off the original ones that came with the books). My friend then used pliers to get some dangly bits off an old set of earings & sewed them onto the lace to make nice book-mark ends.


We also applied other various decoration at this stage, including a large strip of lace to one book.


Step 6:
Curl the pages of the books by rolling the paper around a pencil or whatever other round object you want in the desired thickness. Glue the rolls into place with tacky craft glue or similar. Leave the pencils in as the rolls dry. Once dry remove the pencils.



Step 7:
Glue down the final free pages. Leave to dry. Re-spray paint the books in any areas that were missed (Such as under the rolls).

Step 8: 
Apply pictures and table numbers. For my pictures, I coffee-stained them and then applied a thin plastic over the top that looked vintage (which was purchased from a craft store). I could not find large enough number stencils anywhere that I looked, so I ended up printing the numbers out, cutting them out, and then going over in black ink any spots where the white paper showed through. I then glued these cut-out numbers down.

Apply any extra desired decorations to the pictures (e.g. borders, etc.). Leave it all to dry, do any little touch-ups you may want - and you're done!!!