How To Age Books

Dear Pottery Barn,
I love you dearly, but sometimes you can cost a very pretty penny.
Sincerely,
Me.
I love LOVE love anything that has to do with books and libraries. If (and when) i have my house custom made, the room i will splurge on the most will be my library...split level with inside balcony, spiral staircase, built-in wall aquarium, nautical compass painted on the wooden floor...one can dream :) anyhow, so when i saw this PB decorative accent i thought, 'how perfect! i need something for my coffee table.'

 and then i saw the price, $39 for a bundle of books (four books). ummmm. NO. i surfed the web a little and read a few blogs of people that had DIY instructions on how to make books look 'aged'. there were some really complicated ones and some easier ones, so i'm going to share with you what worked for me. Through the many MANY school years i have put myself through, i have acquired countless numbers of books that are all stashed in the garage. I grabbed two of them to use as guinea pigs (but the project worked so i'm gonna use those as my 'decorative accent'). I ripped the very front and back cover off (you can do this to paper back or hard back books). I then found a container big enough and deeper in width than the book (i used a casserole dish). I used (decaffeinated) coffee for one of the books and (decaffeinated) coffee and some type of berry flavored tea bag for the other book. I just eyeballed the amount of coffee (probably about 3 heaping tablespoons - the darker you want the book stained the more coffee you would use i suppose). I placed the coffee (and tea bag) into the casserole dish and filled it with water (it can be hot or room temperature) and mixed the two together. I put enough of the coffee/water/tea mixture to cover the book (the book will float but then the pages will start to soak up the mixture). To make sure that the front and front pages of the book were wet/stained enough i used a spoon (anything really would work) to pour some of the mixture onto the book. I let one of the books sit in its "bath" for about 3 hours. The other sat in it for about 45 minutes. It just depends on how dark you want them. The darker, the longer they need to sit. I then took them out of their 'baths' and placed them on my back porch to dry. Because it is SO HOT outside right now in GA, i didn't have to wait but maybe half a day for them to completely dry. Now this is where YOUR creativity kicks in. In the PB catalog, there is a picture that shows the books with stamped numbers on their spines. If you want to do that, one blogger said foam stamps worked better for her because the spine was warped from the wetting and drying, so you would just need stamps (Hobby Lobby) and of course ink (distress ink is best too from what i gathered). Here are some web gathered pictures  for ideas (thank you google!)

 

and here are my books:

i'll be placing those on my coffee table along with a few other things, so i will post a before and after then.