A Sewing Box from an Old Book

This is the project I entered in the current challenge on Craftster:  Bookworms.  

Voting doesn't start until March 10th (just in case you want to vote for someone...!)

I found a tutorial to turn a book into a sewing box HERE and I knew it would be 

perfect for my partner in the Book Lover's swap, which I had just started organizing 

when this challenge was announced.  So she got a new sewing box, and I got 

something I could enter in this challenge!  Win-win!

It started with this big, thick volume of Shakespeare I found for $1 at my local library. 

(People donate old books and the library sells them to fund their programs.)

First I removed all the pages--it was actually very easy to do with an X-acto knife:  

just one cut along the inside of the spine at the front and the back, and they all came 

out together. The pages aren't used in this project, so I saved them for something in 

the future.

Then I glued book-themed scrapbook paper to the inside of the covers, 

sandwiching in some ribbon to tie the box closed.  I measured and cut balsa wood 

into the sizes I needed to make the compartments, and used a hot glue gun to hold 

them in place.

I glued more of the scrapbook paper to the outside of the balsa wood to give the 

box a finished look.

I painted the top edges of the wood with gold paint.  The pin cushion is a simple 

circle of fabric stuffed with poly-fill and glued into one of the compartments.  I made 

a matching needle book to complete the package.

The most time-consuming part of this was the planning and the gathering of 

supplies; I've never worked with balsa wood before and I didn't really know where 

to buy it! (I ended up finding it at Michael's; in the future I will probably look for it 

on-line.) I worked slowly since it was the first time I had done it, but now that I have 

the experience, I think I could complete my next box in under two hours.  I like the 

way it turned out, so I will probably do this again, either for myself or a future swap partner.