SECRET COMPARTMENT BOOK

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For Christmas, I made my lil' sis (also a book freak), a secret compartment book. It was really fun to make, and the final result looked great, so I wanted to share it with you all! First step: I bought this sturdy, old book from the local Deseret Industries thrift store for only a couple of dollars.

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Second: I separated the first ten pages or so from the rest with some plastic. I wanted there to be something to hide the compartment inside, even after opening the cover.

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Next: I made a mixture of about half Elmer's Glue-half water. Using a paintbrush, I brushed this on the outside edges of the pages of my closed book. It's supposed to seep in each page from that outside to glue them all together (minus those first few pages that you are keeping separate from the rest).

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As you can see from several pictures above, the moisture now caused the pages to curl and ripple. In order to keep the book from doing this permanently, we then tried several different things to keep the pages together and curl free while they dried.

heavy hanging plant on top? No good. wood clamps? made marks on the book cover. Andrew's muscular body? Perfect. That is, until he quickly got bored. So, we resorted to putting it under a heavy army chest in our bedroom for awhile. The result? Perfectly straight pages.

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After it was dry, I used a ruler and pencil to draw a line about an inch away from all four edges of the top page that had been glued together. This, and the holes we drilled in all four corners, helped to guide the razor blade, as we cut out the compartment. (I'll admit it felt slightly sacrilegious at first, to be defacing a book like this.) Cutting out those pages took some time, and Andrew and I had to keep taking turns because it was surprisingly tiring. (You can only cut a few pages out at a time.)

Then, I pulled out the glue mixture and brushed another layer on the outside edges and a layer on the inside edges we had just cut. After another drying stint under the army chest, I glued pretty paper at the bottom of the compartment (actually the inside back cover), embellished it with ric rac, and modge podged over everything.

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I also glued some pretty paper on the inside front cover just 'cause it looked nice...

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And Finally:Voila! A beautiful, personal, cost-effective Christmas gift that fits my sister's personality. Now she can use it to stash her cash, love notes, or to hide evidence of past crimes. No one would suspect that book to be full of anything

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If you're interested in such a project, you can find (better) directions like these all over the Internet. If you try it out, send me a picture. I wanna see! =)

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