Love me some old books! I have several displays of really old books in my home from our families. The recent trend of “deconstructed books” was just too tempting for me not to give it a try.

I visited my trusty Goodwill Outlet to get me some books to deconstruct. I got 10 hard cover books for $2.00, pretty good deal, huh? I tried to get various sizes (not all the exact same size) so they would stack in a graduated pattern, large to smaller. As with anything I get from the Outlet, the first step is to clean and sanitize it from stem to stern with Lysol

I then opened them up, placing them down where the covers were up and painted them with white craft paint, making sure to get the edges. I picked books with reddish covers for this particular project because I was doing them for Valentine’s Day and wanted some of that red to peak out after being painted and distressed.

After allowing them to dry, I distressed the edges a little and then rubbed them with some Annie Sloan dark wax.

I used a red stamp pad and spelled out “Be My Valentine” on the 3 books. The stamps did smear a tad but a small paint brush with some of the white craft paint let me clean it up like a champ.

Next step was to let them dry and stack them up! It was a fun, quick DIY and worked out perfectly for some cute Valentine’s Day decor. Hope you have fun trying this! Happy Valentine’s Day!