Hollow Books

I worked on some holiday gifts this week as part of my October goals.

I took the plunge and started hollowing out some books. I picked four which included my test book. I followed this tutorial, except for drilling the corners. After finishing one book, I decided that drilling the corners is actually a great idea and did it to the remaining three. I didn't drill the first book partly because both my sick husband and toddler were sleeping while I was doing this and I would have had to dig around for the drill and bits. I also wanted to see if that step was really necessary and now I think it is. I did hollow the book without drilling the corners but it would have been easier with a cleaner look if they had been drilled. 

Here are the books after I mod podged the pages together. The pages and front cover that I don't want glued down are wrapped in saran wrap. The pop cases were the heaviest things I had to cover all four books.

Here is my test book about halfway through the carving. I wish I had a better knife and if this was something I was going to do a lot I'd invest in a quality one. I bought a cheaper one at Michael's that came with several replacement blades.

Both outside corners separated. I am hoping the drilled books won't have this trouble as I won't be tugging at them as much. I think this will be a great gift for kids because who doesn't like to hide stuff from their parents? When I glue the next batch of books one thing I will do differently is look to see if there is a page I want to stop carving at. With the first four I didn't check how many pages there were or if there was a page I wanted to leave uncarved to be the bottom. I think I am done cutting pages from the test book but I still need to glue the edges, both inside and out, and clean up the inside edges so no final pictures yet.