Uncovered Book Bundles

I was recently walking through a mall and went into a store I had never been to (or even heard of) - Restoration Hardware.  What an awesome store!  Unfortunately...Waaaaaay out of my price range, but awesome stuff none the less!  Anyway, as I was wandering through the store, and lusting after many of their items, I came across a very simple item and thought, "Hey!  I could make that!!!"  It was a stack of books that had their covers removed!  Yep!  That's all it was... all for the low, low price of $29.00!!!  YIKES!!!  Would someone really pay that much for 4 old books with their covers ripped off??  In their catalog they are listed as "New - Set of 4 Antiques Uncovered Book Bundles".  Here are a couple of pictures I took with my phone camera (on the sly of course) in the store.

Anyway, it didn't take me very long (like maybe 2 seconds) to figure out that I could make a fairly good reproduction of this lovely item.  I probably have some old books around the house that I could use, but instead I decided to make a quick trip to our local Goodwill store and rip apart some books that I don't care about.  I checked their book selection carefully.  You want to get "older" books, perhaps even a bit "yellowed".  One thing that is important... you need to make sure the cover can be completely removed - especially from the spine, and will leave a "textured" spine.  I was so excited to get started on this (very COMPLICATED) project that I forgot to take pictures of the work in progress, but I think you can probably figure it out all by yourself.  It took me about 5 (very exhausting) minutes to rip apart carefully remove the book covers and tie them up with some twine.  I have some old tags, so I tied one of those on as well and added a stamp on it to finish it off.  

Total cost?  $5 for the books.  Total savings?  $24... not including tax!!!  Whatcha think?

Mine... 

Theirs...

I don't think I did to bad.  PHEW!!!  That was a tough one!!!