Build Instructions

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• 1

  Design Concept Process and Book Compartment Carve Out Step

   Below are some early design adaptations I made when thinking up ideas for the book. These were concepts I thought up, some of which were not used (see below). Some of the concepts were used while other concepts were thrown out. Again, this shows the concepts throughout my thought process. Some of the thrown-out concepts were due to book space limitations and time. As far as it relates to appearance, my goal is to not make the book too neat. I wanted to give an old decrypted look. So, the book outside and inside would not look totally intact. Because ideally, the Halloween book should look centuries old.

    Depending on how the number of electronics you're going to embed into the Halloween book, you must choose a book that will have the space that you need. I chose a rather thick book that I purchased from a second-hand store. I need at least 4 compartments to house my electronics since I used over 7 different boards.  Next, you have to carve out the needed compartments to house the electronics. I used a knife, I then used a Dremel with a circular cutting bit to speed and exact the space I needed.  

    After carving out sections of the inside of the book, I applied mod podge to give a more firm and sturdy compartment.

  After the mod podge dried I would then paint some of the inside sections with black acrylic paint.

  For the section where the displays were going to be housed, I painted them brown. Again, this is after the mod podge dried. I then painted that section brown. and stage the fitting of the inserts.

• 2

  Book Exterior Appearance Step

    The third step is to start with the exterior of the book. I wanted to include some 3D printed Halloween effects such as a spider, skull, bone, etc.. So, I 3D printed those items. This is custom. You can add anything you want. Once printed, I glued them to the front of the book with hot glue. To create the spiderweb, I used hot glue.  Once everything was glued in place I went to the next step.

    The next step is to create a leathery, skin-type appearance. To do this, I used thin tissues and/or thin paper tiles. I damped the paper with water, laid it over the front first. Then I used a medium-sized artist brush and brushed on the mod podge glue. The wrinkles in the paper help with the effect.  The more wrinkles the better it gives the old look (in my opinion)...see below. I let it dry and then moved to the back of the book and then the spine of the book. You can view a photo of the book before paint is applied, this photo is in the file section with the name 'BookBeforePaint.jpg'. 

    Once all was dry the next step was to apply the coloring. For this, I used a combination of colors/paint. I first used a wood stain (Red Oak) with a brownish color. I used about 3 coats, let it dry. I then accented it with some black, then gold paint to give the oldish antique look. Once completed and dried, I moved to the inside of the book. Once all is dry, the outcome should look similar to what's shown below.

• 3

  Internal Wiring Step

    Since the compartments were completed already, I made holes for the wiring runs. I used the spine of the book to run the wire from front to middle to back and so forth. The book spine served as the wire conduit (see below). I used thin 30 gauge wire wrap. This wire is good since it could easily handle the voltage and current load.

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