Book Centerpieces

Here are three of the centerpieces I made for the recent Night Out With Authors event.  I didn't come up with this idea.  I found it in a magazine.  Unfortunately, in my zeal to de-clutter, I didn't keep the issue, so I can't remember which one.  And I'll confess that when I first saw books used in this way, my first thought was "Desecration!"  

My second thought was, "Hey, I've got some foreign editions in the cupboard..." 

How did I make the holes for the ELECTRIC tea lights?   (And for reasons I hope are obvious, you must use ELECTRIC tea lights.) 

First, I found the center point in the cover and traced the tea light.  

Then I started to cut.  Someone thought I must have used a drill.  Nope.  I used fingernail scissors.

After I cut out the hole in the cover (and it's better to do this from the back, I discovered), I ran my pencil around the hole, gathered a few pages, and cut again, from the center out.  I did this many times, until I got down to about Page 200.  That seemed deep enough to me.   

I only encountered one minor problem - the covers tended to stick up, so they had to be taped down.

Cost?  The books I got free from my publisher, the tea lights were 2 for a dollar from Dollarama. 

That's my kind of craft project - easy, inexpensive and no fancy equipment required (although I did have to overcome my qualms about cutting into a book)