It has been a little bit of time since I have shared a DIY with you all, but I have been seeing sprayed edges all over the place the last few weeks. I have been seeing it pop up in my youtube feed quite a lot. Some of these videos were talking about how they liked it, some talking about how they hate it, and some of them are DIYs on how to create this book on your own books. I finally got to a point where I needed to try and do this to one of my books.
I ended up seeing two types of methods being used. The first is using acrylic paint from a tube and painting it onto the book with a sponge or paint brush. I really liked the details that can be made with this option. Then I saw another method where you can use spray paint and acrylic paint. I think a year ago I saw Little Book Owl try this with Nevernight, you can see the video here: PAINTED PAGE EDGES | Defacing Nevernight. While I really like this idea I wanted to start off simple. So, when I came across the following video I wanted to give it a try.
So, for this DIY I needed a few things, some I did not have and did not want to spend a lot of money on. I didn’t have an airbrush, but my Boyfriend does. So I asked him to help me out with this DIY. I did like how in the video he talks about how you can just use a spray can, but I thought it would be fun to try my boyfriends airbrush. I also needed paint, tape, and a book. My BF supplied the thinner needed for the paint, the airbrush, and a bunch of effort!
The most difficult part of this entire process was getting the airbrush to work, but it turned out the one by BF went to use first was actually broken. Thankfully he was gifted another one and on day two… yes day two we were able to complete the DIY. We did not finish the first day because we were trying to use the first airbrush and we ended up using all of the daylight trying to fix the broken one.
Also, just like in the video using less stick tape so you don’t damage the book is great, but sometimes it did not want to stick at all. That was a little aggravating at times, but well worth the effort so random parts of your book aren’t painted. I am glad this video gave you a few tips to help with it and gave me a few idea how to cover the book without using a TON of tape.
If you can guess what book I spray painted please write it in the comments I am curious to see if anyone can figure it out. I will give you a hint, it has been released in 2019.
Anyway, I really loved doing this DIY and I plan to do it again in the future now that we have a working airbrush. It was pretty straight forward and I was very worried about over saturating the pages and cause them to ripple, I didn’t have that problem at all. The pages are still unaffected and sit as intended, with the added bonus of being personalized a bit. It was also great fun with the BF to sit and do this together. It is wonderful when your hobbies overlap!
