When I saw this project on Curbly a while back, I thought it would be the perfect gift for one of the older members of our family to keep cards and pictures and memories fresh and out in the open.
It’s a very simple trick. You take an old hardcover book (again, being a law librarian, I have tons of these), and working in batches you fold all the pages in the book in half towards the spine. You can use as many pages as you want in each batch (you want enough that the fold will hold itself but not too much that you have trouble folding it).
Use a bone folder to get a sharp crease.
It gets harder to get a good fold the further in you are in the book. You really need to jam the edge of the page towards the spine as hard as you can.
When you hit your last section, fold the pages in the opposite direction, so that all the edges are tucked inside.
And then you’re done. It can hold all your mail that needs to be looked at. It can be a compact way to display holiday greeting cards or letters from friends. It can also act as a photo stand so you can look at your whole family in one go.
Then I decided to dress it up a bit. I used newspaper to cover the covers of the book and stuck a roll through the spine to protect it and then spritzed some copper spray paint on the page ends. This way you can still see the words on the pages, but they have a gilded appearance.
Actually, it looks kind of like a heat sink for a computer.
Then I masked the edges of the covers.
And used chalkboard paint on the white part.
So now it’s also a message board as well as a mail holder.
Not a bad little organizer for a book and a bit of paint!
Ali Does It Herself 