Re-usable Book Cover

Re-usable Book Cover
Overview:

At the beginning of every school year children come home with a pile of books! After a few weeks, those beautiful and expensive books have been torn to shreds with bindings that barely keep the pages together. To help solve this problem, I've come up with a wonderful Re-Usable Book Cover craft. Hey, maybe the books will even become more interesting to read!

You will need:
  1. Book to be covered
  2. Duct tape (as many colors as you like)
  3. Felt large enough to cover the book
  4. Scissors
  5. Ruler or straight edge
  6. Permanent marker
Rating:
No votes yet
Difficulty:
Easy peasy (fun and simple)
Age:
School-age, Tweens, Teens
Mess Factor:
Dustpan, please
Prep Time:
5 minutes or less
Time Length:
15 - 30 minutes
Step 1:

Open up your felt piece and lay the book in the center. Align the top of the book with the top of the felt.

Step 2:

Open up your book. Use your ruler to make sure the outer edge of the front cover (while the book is open) is about 5 inches from the edge of the felt. (Move the book as necessary, keeping the top of the book aligned with the top of the felt.)

Step 3:

Leaving the ruler in place and the book open, draw a straight line on the felt extending from where the ruler begins to 5 inches after where the other end of the book ends. Then cut along that line. You should end up with a piece of felt to fit the width of the book as well as having 5 additional inches on either side.

Step 4:

Fold over the extra 5 inches of felt on the the front cover of the book. Rip some duct tape also about 5 inches and apply the duct tape to the folded felt edge.

Step 5:

Remove the book. Now use the tape to seal the felt to itself. Cut off any extra tape.

Step 6:

Repeat three more times for each of the other book corners.

Step 7:

When all the corners are sealed with duct tape, your felt piece should look something like this...

Step 8:

Now it's time to decorate the felt with duct tape! Flip the felt piece over, so the folded over pieces are on the bottom and the flat felt side is on the top. With your duct tape color of choice, start ripping and laying pieces over the felt cover.

Step 9:

You can make any pattern you like! Don't worry about the frayed edges on the bottom. We'll fix those in a minute.

Step 10:

To fix the frayed edges, flip the felt over again. Fold over all those little extras on the top and bottom.

Step 11:

Lay some cleanly-cut duct tape over those frayed edges.

Step 12:

Go ahead and place the book edges in their felt flaps and TA-DA! You have a wonderful re-usable and removable book cover!

Craft Variations:

Here are some of my other book covers!

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Materials:
  1. Book to be covered
  2. Duct tape (as many colors as you like)
  3. Felt large enough to cover the book
  4. Scissors
  5. Ruler or straight edge
  6. Permanent marker

Sophie's Tip of the Week

If you are doing an event in a large outdoor park or location have something available to identify the members of your party or group. Perhaps t-shirts of the same color, or bandanas, wristbands, or even hair scrunchies.