DIY Madame Leota Spellbook Display

Here's Madame Leota's Spellbook from Disney's Haunted Mansion. 

George and I are "ballsdeep" for anything and everything Haunted Mansion related. 

You'll soon see how much it influences our crafts.

I wish I could show you a before picture of the display book that I used for this project.

Unfortunately I was too excited and started the project before I even thought about taking the picture.

LOL, but before I started, it had a poem and a picture of a teddy bear.

Made by Hallmark but can't find any information on it. Sorry about that.

I imagine you could go and buy any hardcover book, seal the pages in glue and mold to desired look.

Paint, Mod Podge, and Glue can transform any object, I'll tell ya whut.

This is a picture of the ORIGINAL book from the ride:

Lovely, isn't it??? <3

Now here is my spellbook:

Since I don't have a before and after picture to show you, 

I'll try to explain in detail how I got it to look like this...

First, I cleaned the display book... 

it was all dusty from sitting in a thrift store (it's literally a real hardcover book with glued pages). 

From there, I used a gold acrylic paint with a sponge brush and gently went over all edges of the paper. Top, bottom, and sides.

I was able to find clear pictures of the pages in the original spellbook, I just sized them to fit my book and printed them on glossy photo paper.

Now here's when we bring in the Mod Podge. Oh... sweet Mod Podge. <3

After the pictures set for a few minutes to make sure they were completely dry,

 I brushed Mod Podge onto the main pages of the book.

I laid the photos onto the Mod Podge'd pages and moved them around until they were lined up and straight. Let dry. One thing about crafts, however much you want to finish a project from excitement or frustration, whatever the case... it's always important to be patient and let your work dry before working on it again. True story.

OK now my spells are on and dry.... time to add some detail.

Any spellbook you see, it's not gonna be clean and pretty... it's gonna be dirty and decrepit, right?

Well, paint can fix that. Just a little grey, yellowish browns, darker browns and a light hand (you don't want to coat the photo or pages, just a light tint... you can achieve this by watering down your paint or dabbing your brush on a tissue before applying.) Let dry. ;D

Now time to finish this bad boy up, time to bust out the Mod Podge again.

With a wide paint brush, I covered the entire book in a thick layer of glossy Mod Podge, to give it that waxy almost unreal look.

 And there you have it.

Madame Leota's Spellbook