How to Make a Magical Flame Tome with CosBond: Part 2

Welcome back to our mini tutorial series on our magical flame tome build. In the first part of this tutorial, we explained how we took a plain composite cardboard hollow book from the craft store, cut a hole for our fake candle, and then covered the outside with vinyl using CosBond Attach & Build. To continue with our flame tome series, we’ll show you how we added the details to the book’s cover and painted our “candle wax” a fiery red.

How to Detail and Paint Your Flame Tome Cover

  1. First, use a puffy fabric paint to add magic glyphs on the cover of the tome around your candle. Get creative here: you can use whatever colors and designs you like (maybe even glow in the dark paint would look cool).  You can also paint them later to match your “wax” like we did, if you want. Keep in mind that some of these designs will get covered up by our fake candle wax, but having them underneath adds a cool level of realism to your tome.
  2. Next, cut out tiny strips from your CosBond Attach & Build.
  3. Place these strips all around some decorative edges. We found our metal edge details in the woodworking section of the craft store, and we thought they would make the book look more ancient and magical.
  4. Peel the backing paper on the CosBond and then stick the metal edges to your cover.
  5. At this point, if you want to add any more details to your cover, you should do so before you go on to the next step. We’re about to cover the surface in hot glue, and it’ll be difficult to add more details underneath after this step.
  6. Now, add some hot glue to make the candle look as if it’s melting. We made a mound of glue around the candle, then drew long strands of glue out to the edges of the book, as if the “wax” has melted from the center of the candle and run off the edges. You can add as much or as little glue as you want.
  7. To paint the candle, start with a layer of yellow for opacity. Then, go over all of your glue with a layer of red spray paint. We used a brush to apply the spray paint so we could be precise.

As you can tell, the detail step of our flame tome build is pretty quick and easy. Thanks to CosBond, we don’t have to wait for any glue to dry on the decorative edges before we move on to the hot glue and paint. In the next tutorial, we’ll be adding bookmarks and latches to finish off our flame tome.