How to Recover the Cover of Your Altered Book

Perhaps you found a hard cover book in fantastic shape. It's just the right size and thickness for your altered book art project but the cover is less than appealing. Maybe it's one with a deep-grained fabric in a drab color with an equally unexciting spine.

First thing is first. Do you like the grain of the fabric? Do you want it to show through whatever the paper is you have chosen for the new updated cover? If you don't you also don't want to cover this heavy-duty fabric with a flimsy 24lb piece of patterned paper. I wanted to completely block out any part of the drab cover including the texture in my project. Patterned papers of normal weight transposed the graining once it was glued down. I tried 65lb cardstock next. This was much better. The grain didn't transpose and I now had a clean canvas to work on. Luckily for crafters you can now find fantastic printed glossy cardstock at your local craft supply store. Even luckier are the new fabric like papers, like the one I used in the pictures. This velvet type paper had a canvas kind of backing, which combined with the nap to cover the original worn fabric cover.

If you pay attention you can see how the original cover was constructed. First the outside page goes on and the edge and corners are folded over to the inside cover. Cover paper is used on the inside to overlap these edges and make everything uniform. Measuring is of the utmost importance here. Too big and the overlap is too much, too little and it's scrap paper. "Measure twice cut once". Now that you see how it's done now you have to redo it.

Two options now appear. Option one is a full cover. If you have a larger piece of paper you may be able to cover the entire book in one shot. Option #2, the easier, and therefore the one I went for is to make three pieces.

The front and back pieces will stop just beyond the bends of the covers and then are overlapped by a spine piece. In most cases this will allow you to use standard sized papers that are readily available. Do the front and back cover sections first, measure top to bottom and add 1". Next, measure from the opening edge to just beyond the cover fold/crease and add 1/2".