Trash to Treasure: Secret Keepsake Book Box

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Adding a secret fun twist to this Trash to Treasure Transformation guest series is Emily of Go Haus Go who just so happens to have one of my favorite homes in blogland. I've never met her but I'm betting she is one of those people that just light up a room with their personality. Her space is so bright and happy that you simply can't look at it without smiling. Visit her blog to see all of her clever ideas and decor.

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Hi there! The name is Emily and I write a blog called Go Haus Go. I blog about the ever-transforming design of my own home, with snippets from my life and things I'm loving mixed in.

When Stefanie asked me to do a Trash to Treasure post, I immediately turned to my Goodwill donation pile. I wanted to do something along the lines of hidden storage. Ever since my car was broken into a few weeks ago, I've been paranoid about my valuables. I figure that with a locked safe someone can just take the whole thing (Is that even true? For some reason I believe it!) so I wanted something a little more secret and sneaky. I spied this happy yellow book at the bottom of the donation pile...

Yep, you got it. I set out to create a secret storage space out of a long-forgotten book.

My materials were a used hardback book longer than 300 pages, X-acto knife, straight edge, decorative tape, striped fabric and a piece of foam core to outline the box shape on the pages.

Begin cutting the rectangle shape into the book pages.

The picture below shows me several pages in, but I actually started on the first page of the book, so my secret storage was accessible as soon as I opened the cover. I wanted a pretty large space to stash my treasures, so my pattern size is 3" x 7". I was able to cut through about 20 pages in one "cut" so creating the deep box went pretty quickly.



Keep cutting until the desired depth is reached!

I wanted a depth of about 1.5" so it took cutting through 250 pages to get there. It took about 15 minutes to do this, which went way faster than I expected.




Decorate/reinforce the keepsake box!

Once I had the space cut out, the book itself was looking pretty plain and blah. I also wanted to reinforce the top page so everything was nice and sturdy. I used decorative tape (like a washi tape, just more substantial) on the first page and a striped fabric on the bottom page of the box to create a sturdier frame. I also wanted some pattern on the inside to make it not so plain.




Pick a spot to place the keepsake box!

Once my keepsake box was all ready to go, it was time to get it set up. This space is right next to my bed. I take off all my jewelry before I go to bed, so this seemed like the best location.



Here's the keepsake box all set up and ready to stash any treasures.




And here's my book-turned-keepsake-storage holding some of my essentials.




There you have it!

I guess by posting this I've given away my own secret storage, but I wanted to pass along this little DIY to you!

I'm signing off, but before I go, please feel free to stop by and say hi to me at Go Haus Go.

Thanks so much Stef for having me!