Secret Compartment Book Tutorial

Hi everyone! Sometimes you need a little place to tuck things away and keep them safe from little brothers and sisters. Favorite jewelry, makeup, birthday cash, and Pokemon cards are all things that tend to go missing in my house and later be found tucked under someone else’s pillow. This Secret Compartment Book Tutorial is the perfect way to tuck little things out of sight and keep them safe from brothers and sisters.

This is slightly more time consuming than my usual projects, and involves lots of time using a craft knife. So make sure you’re using it safely and find a good movie to watch or audiobook to listen to while you’re working on this! Let’s get started!

Get more fun ideas for kid’s rooms while you are here!

Secret Compartment Book Tutorial

Supplies:

• Old book – Library book sales are a great source of these, but I bet you already have lots of books you never read anymore. It needs to be at least an inch thick.
• Ruler
• Craft knife and extra blades
• Pencil
• Flat paint brush
• Mod podge (gloss gel medium or school glue also work)
• Clips (I used a hair clip, but binder clips work best)
• Thin cutting board or mat

Start by finding where you want the compartment to start. I go about 1/8 of the way into the book, and open it up there. Use a clip to hold those pages back. Taking a ruler, I measure 1/2 inch in from the binding, and 3/4 inch in from each of the 3 sides.

Draw lines at those points to form a box. Now you’re going to take your craft knife and start cutting out the inside of the box we just drew. Cut through a couple pages at a time, using the edges of the already cut pages as your guide.

When the amount of cut pages gets too deep to work around easily, clip some of those pages up and continue. As you get further into the book, you’ll want to prop the cover up at a right angle so it doesn’t affect how the bottom pages sit. When you get a good way into the book, place your thin cutting mat into the book about 1/8th of the way up. This way you don’t cut all the way to the back cover. Finish cutting out your pages until you get to the mat. Now release all the clipped pages, and place some mod podge on one of your cut out pages.

Brush mod podge on the outside of your cut pages, all the way down to the bottom of the book. Leave the uncut pages at the front loose. Slide a couple of the extra cut pages between the cut and uncut pages so they don’t stick together, and make sure everything below the extra sheets is well coated with mod podge. Set an extra book on top and something heavy on top of that, and let it dry for several hours.

When it’s dry, open it up and remove the extra pages carefully. If anything stuck around the edges, use your craft knife to carefully remove it. Now you’re going to use something heavy to hold the top pages open, and then paint the inside of the cut pages with modge podge. I usually do two layers because the cut edges tend to be rougher, and this gives a smoother finish.

I also like to mod podge the bottom page to make it more sturdy. Now let the whole book sit open and dry overnight, at least 6 hours.

And you’re all done! I hope this Secret Compartment Book Tutorial was helpful for you, and that you have fun making one yourself!