Homemaking 101 | DIY Removeable Bookpage Wallpaper

Apartment living doesn't usually give a person a lot of 'fun' decor options. Mostly because you usually can't paint the walls and that means everything is white, white, white! Well I don't like plain white walls...I hate them a lot actually. Which is why I have worked hard to come up with a few creative, but still easily removable ideas to spice things up a bit.

Today I'm going to show you how I created "bookpage wallpaper" for our bedroom wall. I LOVE it. Hubby took a little time to come around to it, but he likes it now. And let me tell you...it takes a bit of work, but it was TOTALLY worth it!

What You Need

1-2 books*

A roll of masking tape

Notes

*the amount of books you need depends on the space you have to cover. I just did the wall with or bed headboard on it. That took me almost two full books.

Directions

One of the two books I used for this project. Emma by Jane Austen.

1. Picking The Book(s). This is slightly important since you're going to be tearing a part a book in order to do this project (at least if you're doing it the way I did!). I have been a long-time fan of Jane Austen so my choices were the books "Emma" and "Pride & Prejudice" which are two of my favorites. Next you need to locate your books. I chose to search at local thrift stores/second hand stores for mine. I found both of the books (on different days) and spent less than $1 on each book.

Pages lined up ready to be taped together on my living room floor.

2. Select project space. Pick a day to do this project when you won't have a lot of traffic running through whatever room has the most floor space. I chose the living room since that's our biggest open floor space.

Left: pages in the book. Right: pages out of the book.

3. Start ripping pages! This part will actually take longer than you'd think because if you try to rip too many at a time they just won't budge, and then if you're not careful you could rip a page completely in half...take your time and it'll eventually get done. I ripped two books of pages (I didn't use pages with images on them though).

4. Line the pages up. Okay this part can be done pretty much however you want to. I rotated having the 'raw' edge (where the page was torn from the book) back and forth every other page in the line. You will need to measure from the ceiling to floor to figure out how many pages you'll need per row. My walls used about 13 pages per row...BUT the pages on the bottom were different lengths so I would just tear or cut off the excess with scissors and the tape down the end.

Double 'tape rolls' at the top of each row of book page's to keep them on the wall.

5. Start taping pages together. I just put a piece of tape at the top of each book page so that it overlapped onto the page ahead of it. Then you'll need to do some 'tape rolls' about every other page and double at the top and bottom to keep your new wallpaper up on the wall.

The book pages taped to the wall.

6. Placing on the wall. I started on the outside edges and worked my way in. You can do it however you want.

You can tell the difference in pages if you look closely. From the right: three darker, two lighter, two darker, one lighter, one darker...and the patter was the same on the other side of the wall.

7. Using different color pages. If you used two different books you may notice that there's a difference in the color of the paper so you may choose to do a pattern on the wall. That's what I did and it turned out really cool.

8. Finishing touches. Once you finish the main part of the wall you might have something crazy to work around, such as a window. In several places I individually taped up pages so that I could make sure they covered everything the way I wanted.

There you have it! Of course you may have to use a little creative juice to make your bookpage wallpaper work the way you want it to (I know I did), but it's totally worth the end result. I love my new wallpaper!

Here are some 'after' photos of the finished project:

The view into the bedroom from the doorway.

One nightstand with the 'wallpaper' behind it.

And a close up of a few of the many pages used!

I love how this project turned out!

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