Of Cats and Crafts: A Slightly Longer than Expected Project

I went into this hidey-hole book business thinking it was going to take an hour.

I started after lunch and at about midnight, I finished this. And I only have ONE! Maybe I need to invest in a new exacto knife..
But, I think it turned out well, so here's to another tutorial!

Make Your Own Hidey-Hole Book
Start out with materials:

1- A book. -- I really like big, heavy books full of words, like dictionaries or Style books, with hard covers. It gives it the support you'll need if you're trying to get away hiding expensive jewelry in this (which I don't recommend unless you have a clasp of some sort on the book to keep it nice and shut). I picked Modern English Usage by Fowler from 1958. Old writing books give me some sort of warm comfort. I love to see how language changes and gives us meaning. (Recently read Pygmalion and I'm totally obsessed now. I grew up watching My Fair Lady and I've been in a manic state of reading and watching, reading and watching :) The songs are permanently stuck in my head and my boyfriend is going to kill me if I keep singing them!) But anyway..

2- A damn good exacto knife

3- A pencil

4- A 10 cent foam brush, Mod Podge and glue

5- A Ruler

6- A placemat

How To:

Pretty simple--

1- Pick where you want your nook to start. I started about halfway through the book on the "love of the long word entry" and "lovey" page.

2- Pencil in the size of your nook- it should basically reflect your book size and what you're putting in there.

3- Using the ruler, start cutting! I did small 20 page sections at a time just to make sure I'm still on track cutting the same shape in the same area. To manage by section, insert the placemat where you want to end cutting so that way, your exacto knife cuts your placemat and not the other pages.

4- Keep cutting until you get to the desired depth of your nook.

5- Initially, I thought this might be enough, but I decided it was not sturdy enough to sufficiently store valuable treasures, so I started gluing the nook's pages together. Make sure the glue is spread out and even over each page or else you'll get bumps, wrinkles and probably tearing. Squeeze on the glue and spread it with the foam brush.

6- Keep gluing... When you get the hang of it, you'll realize you won't need to glue each page because they stick together enough when the edges get glue on them to neglect some pages, plus the last step takes care of it.

7- Mod Podge the edges of the nook- inside and out to secure them enough to be a large, hollow brick. At this point, you'll want to glue the last page of the nook to some full pages to solidify the back to the nook.

8- Let dry and you can start storing your valuable, secret belongings :)

My sewing things are the most important things to my heart, especially those thread snippers. They were my late grandmother's who I understand was an incredibly creative, sewing, crafting wonder. I like to keep them close on my sewing table.

If you've made it this far, you're all set. Put your newly disguised book back on the shelf and no one will ever notice.. perfect place to hide your valuables from misbehaved, thieving cats!