How to Bedazzle a Book Cover

This summer, my children’s lit book club had a book bedazzling night and it was SO fun!

Frankly, I’m not very crafty so I wasn’t sure if it would be particularly fun for me, but then I loved it so much that I immediately came home and ordered bedazzle supplies for my kids to do it and they’ve been bedazzling nonstop.

For our book club, everyone brought a book of their choice and the hostess provided all the bedazzling supplies. We estimated that one set of the gems would easily do 100 or more books.

She also bought a set of these wax pencils that make it very easy to transfer the gems onto the book covers plus there are little trays to hold the gems.

Everyone worked on their book covers and talked about what they’d been reading recently and it was just a perfect summer book club evening.

I’ve loved hearing from so many people in my community that they’ve done it at book club, with their kids, at family reunions and camps and it has been a huge hit.

Here’s how we’ve bedazzled our books (it is so simple!):

1. Put the gem color of your choice in a small dish
2. Carefully apply glue (we used the ones that came in the set) to the part of the book cover you want to bedazzle. I usually do enough for 8-10 gems at a time.
3. Using the wax pencil, transfer a gem from the dish to the cover.
4. Repeat until all the glue is covered and then apply glue to the next section and repeat with more gems.
5. Let dry fully and enjoy!

The biggest questions about book bedazzling were first, “how does a bedazzled book fit on the shelf?” The gems are pretty flat so it’ll protrude slightly but I still easily put my books back on the shelf without any problems. If that’s a deal breaker for you, some people bedazzle the spines of their books instead!

Second, “do the gems stay on a bedazzled book?” So far we haven’t had any gems fall off – the glue is really secure so your bedazzled books should stay bedazzled as long as you let them fully dry!

Any other questions about how to bedazzle book covers? I’m happy to answer!

If you liked this post on how to bedazzle book covers, you might also like these other posts:

• 15 of the Best Puzzles I’ve Done
• 15+ Activity Books for Kids
• 15 Things to Do While Listening to an Audiobook