See the latest version of the instructions here.
Decorating your walls with book pages as wallpaper is an easy DIY Project where you can show off your love of books. Learn how to do it here!
On Monday Olivia will be 9 months old! I can’t believe time has gone so fast, but I’m glad to have finally finished this project that I had in my mind for so long! Thank you everyone for giving Olivia so many books and for giving pages to go on the wall and suggestions. It made it so personalized and it was so nice to include part of so many people in this wall 🙂
When I was first deciding on decorating Olivia’s room, I didn’t want it to be too girly in case we have a boy at some point and they have to share a room, and I wanted it to be something Olivia could grow into. I love books, Isaac loves books, so we thought maybe a book room could be gender neutral. And I saw this blog where they used book pages as wallpaper, and thought that would be fun!
Before Olivia was born, my mom and dad came over and helped me paint her room and add a layer wallpaper so we could more easily remove this if we ever decide to. We used
this paintable wallpaper and
this wallpaper paste and only got as far as putting the wallpaper up…
So, my mom came over at 10 and I had warned her ahead of time that we would be working on this instead of walking. So put a portacrib in our bedroom, put Olivia down for a nap, and got started! I managed to print all but 3 of the pages before my ink ran out completely.
After much thought, I decided to scan and print the pages only in black, on very white paper rather than the manila I had originally thought to use. I was afraid that manila would look dingy quickly and we might not be able to space out colored images easily on the wall. I had 327 pages that I printed as 5×7 so it took 164 sheets of paper for this wall (I had thought I needed about 300 pages, so I added extra and I’m glad I did!)
We had a pretty even mix of pages with just words, and pages with images on them, so we sorted them into piles (images horizontal, images vertical, full page words, less than full pages words) so we could get an relatively even mix. We started in the middle so we could make it not uniform and my mom and I went different directions so we could get more done.
We started by cutting the pages to the size we wanted then rolling the wallpaper paste directly onto the wall, then putting the page on the wall. I was afraid that if we did it on the paper, it might get too wet and rip. Even doing it that way, the paper did get pretty wet and we had to be careful about smoothing it as we went. We used a
dough scraper to make sure it was even and smooth out the edges and tried not to use our finger because they got covered with ink and smudged. My mom did much better than I did, I got kinda lazy as the day wore on and over pasted and then used my fingers, so you can tell what side I did and what side she did if you come look…
At this point, Olivia woke up and we took a break to have lunch.
I should have videod it, but at one point we put Olivia in her crib to keep her from grabbing everything that she shouldn’t (wallpaper jug, any scrap of paper that fell on the floor, a paint roller, the stools, etc. How does she know exactly what doesn’t normally belong in her room? The Duplos she normally loves to play with were forgotten) and she thought that my mom was playing peekaboo with her anytime she turned around and was giggling up a storm! Olivia did pretty good considering all the excitement and not being paid attention to for a while, especially because she has gotten more clingly in the past couple of days.
Then at a little before 6pm (almost 8 hours!), we finally finished! Here is the final product before moving everything back into place and final touch ups. I’m so happy with the mix of words and images, it really looks amazing! And we had only 2 pages leftover! I really cut it close….
My mom couldn’t believe that we got it all done in one day, but I’m so glad we did!
And all cleaned up right before we put Olivia to bed for the night. It really wasn’t too much of a mess to clean up, just the rollers and paper scraps and putting everything back where it belonged.
So Olivia’s book nursery is almost done! I still have the hook rug to complete, but I think it is pretty much decorated now. Hopefully this is something she can grow into, because it was a lot of work!
Thank you so much Mommy for all your help. It turned out better than I could have imagined!
Have you tried this? What books did you have to include on your wall?
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I loved spending the day with you and Olivia. Enjoyed the show-tune music we listened to and watching you and Olivia interact (and Isaac and Olivia towards the end of the job). I'm very proud of you – and proud of me, too, for helping. You made me feel creative. Love you!
Thank you, your side still looks better than mine! Love you!