Spell Book

Check out this super awesome spell book…made with paint, hot glue, Mod Podge, and dollar store items. The paper towel trick is such a fun way to add lots of cool old-aged texture!

If you need a sign to gather your friends for a fun Halloween craft night- THIS IS YOUR SIGN! And this is your craft! This spell book is very inexpensive as well as totally customizable! We bought all the supplies and books and my daughter invited all her friends! They had a blast creating their own unique Halloween books!

A few years ago…My cousin sent me the fun DIY spell book that she made.

And I had to make one right away! They were so cool! I only made one, and my kids have fought over it year after year! We even found it hidden under my son’s bed in July. 

When I was recently at the library and they had a bunch of old books they were getting rid of for a quarter a piece…so I decided it was time for the kids to each make their own! But we are adding a fun twist to the original version! 

You can take this spell book one step further and create a secret apartment inside.

Supplies to make your own dark arts book 

• Hard bound book (we found ours at the Library but the Dollar Tree has some as well.)
• Creepy Crawling things: spiders, googly eyes, bats, skeletons etc. Most can be found at the Dollar Tree..
• foam letter stickers (you can use wood letters or chipboard!)
• Black paint
• mod podge
• paper towel
• gold paint
• hot glue

How to make a spell book for Halloween

Step 1: Decorations.

You can add whatever you want on the book. I have a whole bunch down below so you can get some ideas. Letters are super fun. We actually doubled up the foam letters so they popped out more.

You can glue on eyeballs, spides, skeletons, bones, etc!

A fun trick is to use your hot glue gun to make some decorations directly on the book. We added a border, a spiderweb, stitches, and even some fun “book-looking embellishments.

The first book I did, I couldn’t find any stickers that fit and I actually cut out the words with chipboard with my silhouette!

Another fun element is clay! We wanted to recreate the Hocus Pocus spell book and so we just used clay so we could create all the elements of it!

The eyeball above is a ping pong ball cut in half and hot glued on. The eyeball below is actually an eyeball we drew (you could print one out) and then we covered it with hot glue and let it dry!

Step 2: Texture

This is the part that you technically can skip- but the paper towel trick gives the book an old-aged texture look! Most paper towels are 2 ply. We pulled apart the two sections to create a thinner layer. We grabbed a paintbrush and covered the design with Mod Podge and then laid the one-ply paper towel on top.

Then go over the top with more Mod Podge and use the paintbrush to really push the paper towel around each section of the book. You want the items to pop out.

TIP: Instead of a paper towel, try using a scrunched-up tissue paper for a different look!

Some items might stick out really far on top of the book, just like the spider on the book below. I ended up just tearing the paper towel around it. I also did that for the eyeballs on the book so you could actually see them!

This book is one I made originally! This is one without the paper towel trick! The book still had a little texture on it!

Step 3: Paint

Time to paint your book! The majority of us painted our books black- but you can do whatever color you want! Cover the book in your paint.

The books look pretty flat. So this step is pretty important! Grab some gold paint. Just add a little bit to the tip of the paintbrush and you are going to lightly go over the book. You don’t want to be heavy-handed with the paint.

If the gold is too much, brush back over it with black paint! Look how much it pops when the gold is added!

Hocus Pocus spell book inspirations:

Here is the Hocus Pocus version! We did brown paint of course and added dark brown and tan paint to highlight the details!

Here is my daughter’s book. I love that she dipped here fingers in paint and did a handprint as well as the cluster of eyes in the corner!

This is my youngest daughter’s. She does NOT believe in the less is more mentality. She found an old chain and glued it around the edge and we created the lock with hot glue.

These words are just hot-glued right on the book. so if you can’t find foam letters or want to just create your own- a great option!

And don’t forget about the spine and the back of the book!

Just make sure the back of the book isn’t too pocky or it won’t lay flat on the counter or mantle!

Words to put on a potion book:

• Spell Book
• Dark magic
• Dark Arts
• Sorcery
• Potions and Spells
• curses
• Black magic
• hocus pocus

You could also put any fun Harry Potter spells!

Too busy to get crafting today? No problem! Pin this post to remind yourself about this project later! Sharing my projects helps me reach more people, allowing me to continue sharing free content!