I have a stack of treasured vintage books that I have inherited from my Grandparents and Great Grandparents. Those books have a place of honor on my book shelf. But I also have a box of old, water stained, torn up books in the garage that are not even good enough for a thrift store donation or library. Their pages have just seen too much wear in their lifetime to be good as a book. But that doesn’t mean they’re worthless. The other day I took a few pages and created decorative hearts out of old books.

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Paper Hearts out of Old Books

Materials Needed

• Old pages from a book (sheet music would work as well)
• Scissors
• Stapler
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Rafia ribbon or colorful string

Directions

• Measure and cut 8 strips of paper 1 inch wide. (I made my strips about 10 inches long since that was the size of the book. You could make them as long as you wanted your hearts to be.)
• Divide them into 2 piles of 4 strips each.
• Trim the ends of 3 of the strips so that each strip is 1 inch shorter than the previous strip.

• Line up the strips so that one end is even and the other end shows the shorter edges.
• Staple the end that has the strips lined up.
• Then pull the strips so that the other end is lined up even and staple the other end. You will see that you have a dimensional shape forming.

• Now it’s time to attach the two halves of the heart. Staple the top two pieces of the heart; then connect the bottom edges and staple. You could even glue a decorative button to cover the staple.

• The Final Step is giving the heart a loop. I used a large needle with a piece of rafia ribbon. There is a natural opening where the staple connects the paper, so I just threaded the needle through that opening and tied a loop.

Have you ever made paper hearts out of old books? I’d love to hear what you use these for.