Creating DIY art is one of my very favorite things! I love saving money by making something myself, I like being able to customize art to perfectly suit my space, and I just plain enjoy the creative process. Today I’m excited to share my tutorial for the DIY book page spiral art that you may have noticed in my master bedroom gallery wall.
Before I launch into the tutorial, let’s first talk about the inspiration. When I started planning the gallery wall for our new master bedroom, I knew I wanted to include some works of art among the photos in order to give the gallery a more high end and collected feel. While shopping at West Elm, a piece of framed art caught my eye. The spirals totally appealed to my modern sense of style, but the $199 price tag was way out of my budget!
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via West Elm
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The original was created from thinly shaved pieces of stained ash wood arranged on a linen backdrop – but I knew I could create a similar look in a shadow box using spirals of paper. Since I wanted all of the frames for my gallery wall to be black for consistency, I purchased a black shadow box frame. Rather than creating my spirals from a solid color of paper {which would have looked more like the original}, I instead went for a modern, graphic look by creating my spirals from book pages. To make my book page art a bit funkier, I created elongated, imperfect spirals and chose not to lay them out in perfect rows.
At first glance, replicating the West Elm art seemed simple enough, but do you notice how those spirals all seem to float in the middle – with gap around all the sides? Well, that made it a bit trickier and I had to get creative to mimic that look from the original. My first thought was the somehow adhere the spirals to the back of the frame – but that’s easier said than done when you are talking about gluing something that’s paper thin. I feared that no matter how careful I was, the glue to show and look messy {or wouldn’t stick at all}, so I needed to find another answer. And the solution I came up with was to use an 8×8 mat inside of the 12×12 shadow box frame. I’ll show you how I did it, but let’s start with the complete supply list.
SUPPLY LIST:
- Book that you are willing to tear pages out of {I recommend a hard cover book because the pages are thicker}
- 12×12 shadow box frame {$10 on sale from Target}
- Mat with an 8×8 opening to fit a 12×12 frame {$4 from Amazon}
- Black acrylic paint {already owned}
- Paint brush {already owned}
- Paper cutter {or scissors and a ruler}
- EK Success Squeeze and Roll Glue Pen {already owned, available from Michaels}
- Paper clips {a dozen or so}
I started by placing a line of glue along one end of a book page strip.
I then rolled the end of the strip over to create a small circle and applied pressure for a few second until the glue stuck. I then added a second line of glue a bit further up the paper.
Again, I wrapped the paper around forming another, slightly larger circle, and squeezed the paper together at the location of the glue until it stuck.
I repeated this process as I worked my way down the strip of paper.
Once I reached the end of the paper, I added a final line of glue to the very end of the strip and wrapped it around the complete the spiral.
I used two paperclips to hold the spiral together for 10 minutes or so to allow the glue to dry completely.
When the mat was bevel side up {which is the standard way to use a mat}, the inside edge of the mat acted like a ramp – allowing the spirals to slide out of place. By instead placing the mat bevel side down, the inner edge of the mat was raised up, creating a barrier that held the spirals perfectly in place.
I had purchased a white mat because it was much cheaper than a custom black mat, so I simply painted the back of the mat with black acrylic paint. I was working quickly and didn’t want to spend a lot of time getting set up to paint, so I just tore out a couple of pages for a magazine to keep the counter clean, and squeezed the paint directly on to the mat, using my brush to spread it around and smooth it out.
Once the paint dried, I was ready to assemble to frame pieces.
I laid the black mat {bevel side down} on top of the black velvet backer board. Then I laid the “inner frame” on top of the mat.
As you can see in the photo above, the edge of mat holds the spirals in place. Once I was happy with the layout of the all the spirals, I place the frame’s glass on top of the inner frame so that the spirals were then sandwiched below the glass.
Finally, my husband carefully lifted up the entire thing, making sure to keep the inner frame, mat and glass in place, so that the spirals wouldn’t shift. While he held it, I slid the outer frame down over it and bent the metal tabs on the back into the place to hold the frame securely together.
And there you have it, my West Elm inspired DIY book page spiral art, which cost only a fraction of the cost of the original work of art.
I think this book page art looks best when viewed from an angle because it allows you to really appreciate the writing on the spirals.
For that reason, I chose to hang the book page spiral art high on my gallery wall, so that you can really appreciate the spirals when looking up at it.
I also DIY’d several other pieces of art for the gallery wall. Using the links below, you’ll find details about each of those art projects, as well as all of the other projects that went into the making of our master bedroom makeover.
