Halloween Spell Book - Under the Disney Spell

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I wanted a new Halloween display this year and I decided to create a fun (and maybe a little bit spooky) Witches table. Potion bottles, cauldron, and most importantly, the Halloween spell book! I made this awesome poison apple potion bottle, and that started the whole idea to keep it Disney themed! I’m so in love with how it’s turning out! After the poison apple bottled turned out so well, I made this Cheshire cat potion bottle to go with it. Isn’t it so fun? A little whimsy to balance out the spooky.

Potion bottles are fun, but no self respecting witch would be missing her spell book in a setup like this. A few years ago I made a decorative spell book. I took a large coffee table book I purchased for $1 at the library used book sale and I altered the middle page to show the Iconic spell from Macbeth. It turned out wonderfully creepy, but it has a few flaws (in my opinion). One, it’s huge and cumbersome. Hard to display. And two, it only opens to the one page in the middle. The other pages are glued and fixed in a way that they look nice when the book is opened. The whole effect was nice, but there was no interaction, it was decoration only. I want something a little different. I’m so excited to show you what I’ve come up with!

First, I started with a much smaller book! The goal was to be able to pick it up, and actually be able to read it and look through it. And to make it easier to display.

Here’s what you’ll need to make your own Halloween Spell book:

A hardback book (one that you won’t mind never being able to read again)
Hot glue
White glue or mod podge
acrylic craft paints
Gesso (You can complete this without the Gesso, but it makes it easier to alter the pages with it)(Affiliate link)
Spell book printables (I will give you mine free on Sunday so check back!)
Scissors

The first step in making a spell book is to prepare your book. It will take a little work to get it ready! With your white glue, or mod podge, glue some pages together.

Paint the glue over the page, then stick the page to the next page. I stuck 6-8 pages together. This makes the pages thick, and stiff, and it cuts down on the number of pages you will need to alter. While having a 200 page spell book might be fun, it would take years and years to complete that many pages.

Next I covered the pages in Gesso. This is a paint medium that prepares any surface to receive paint. This step isn’t necessary, but I like how it helped with the overall look, and it covered up the old book text.

I wanted to give the book an older feel and look so I took a lighter next and I burned the pages a little bit. You should obviously keep water close by whenever you are working with fire. You want to singe the pages, not burn down your house.

After the pages were ready I altered the cover. There are so many ways you can do this! Your imagination is the limit. For this specific book I used hot glue and acrylic craft paint. Hot glue is my favorite tool when it comes to easy alterations. It’s cheap and so easy to work with! Draw the design you want on your book with the hot glue, fill it in, and when the glue cools and dries, you just need to paint it!

The perfect custom dimensional effect. In keeping with the Disney theme, the cover of my book is the poison apple, of course.

Once the cover was done, I added the spell pages! I made these spell pages myself with Disney spells I gathered from a wide range of movies. I am so excited about how they turned out! Hubby even helped me write a curse of our own for a favorite movie moment where the curse happened, but was not actually recited. I created enough spells to fill half of my book. These spells were a lot of work! I think I will create the second half next year, I have so many other projects I want to fit in, and limited time to do them. This is the perfect project to split in half!

Adding the pages was easy. After I printed them out, I trimmed off the excess paper and just glued them onto the book pages with mod podge (white glue would work just as well). I painted the white book pages around the spells with some acrylic craft paint to add to the old book effect. I wanted to add a ribbon page marker as well so I just hot glued it in the book binding.

Isn’t my book marker charm adorable?! I made this cute little poison apple Mickey charm with hot glue and paint! I just made three hot glue circles on some wax paper, waited until it was cool and hard then peeled it off and painted it to look like the apple! I glued my cute new charm to my ribbon book marker.

Be sure to check back on Sunday for the free printable spell book pages! I have a good number of really great ones to give you! Print them out to put in your own spell book. All the awesome, in a fraction of the time. (Seriously, a fraction… these pages took me weeks to create, and I’ll just hand them to you, because I love you!)