Painted Books to add French Style

Before I even begin this post, I want to thank all of you who came over from Junk Chic Cottage to visit!  You guys are awesome!!  Thank you Kris for featuring me Saturday.  I was so honored to have been your Saturday Spotlight.  All of you - my readers and followers, lots of new friends - you guys are amazing and you made my weekend.  I even sold a lot of items in my shop, so I thank you, from the bottom of my heart!

Old, timeworn, French books.  I love them but I don't have any.  I did however, find on Pinterest, a cool idea that I'm sure you all have either seen or maybe even tried yourselves - painting books!

Okay, so I started adding of few Easter touches around the house.  It's been so cold, I think I'm trying to coax spring to arrive a little sooner than later!

I have this pretty silver dish that I found at a flea market so I filled it with some moss and added Easter eggs and a faux chocolate bunny.  I put it on the coffee table but it needed some height.  Here is where the books come in.  I like to stack books to create height in some of my vignettes.  It's pretty and it's functional but this dish required larger books.

On Pinterest, I saw people painting old encyclopedia sets.  About a year ago, I found a set of books called "The Young Students Learning Library."  They're basically a childrens encyclopedia set.  I bought them and have been holding on to them to paint "one day"

I painted each of the books with Amy Howard at Home One Step Paint in Robins Egg Blue.

Then I hand stamped the painted books on the covers and spines.  I used StazOn ink by Tsukineko

  so that it wouldn't smear when I antiqued them.

{I'm not paid to endorse either of these companies...I just happen to like these products}

After everything was dry, I just rubbed some walnut ink around the edges and in some of the stamped places to age them a bit.

It was a fairly quick project and I'm happy with the way they turned out.

I think they add just the right height to my flea market dish!

I hope you get a chance to try this!  It was a fun project and you can use these pretty much anywhere in your decor.  They look great on book shelves too!

 {plus, the information inside the books is interesting and fun to read for the little ones}

xo and God Bless,

Kathleen

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