Remove dust jackets and recycle them or use them for another craft project.

If you don’t have a large enough piece of cardboard, use newspaper, an old sheet, or anything else that will protect the surface you’re working on.

If you want to cover up a dark cover or a design in order to paint something new, use white acrylic paint. If you’re interested in just painting the book a new color to use as a design accent, choose whatever color you like best.

Acrylic paint takes about 20 to 30 minutes to dry.

Keep your painted books on a shelf or use them throughout your house as accent pieces. There’s no right or wrong way to decorate with them!

Remember, if you make a mistake, you can always paint over it.

It would be fun to create new cover designs for the books based on their themes and stories. For example, you could paint a scene from The Great Gatsby on the cover of that book. You could even create a scene that extends over several book spines. For example, paint all the spines of the Harry Potter books to illustrate one of your favorite scenes from the series. Then put the books back on your bookshelf and enjoy!

These books would make great gifts for someone who loves to read, especially if you painted one of their favorite books and picked a quote from it to write on the front.

You could even use multiple colors of paints to highlight different images.

You could also tape off a design or a quote on the cover before splatter painting it. Once the paint has dried, remove the tape to reveal your design underneath.

Acrylic paint is also very easy to wash off of clothes and skin.

Chalk paint doesn’t have a shiny finish, so if that’s something you want, you’d be better off picking an acrylic or oil paint.

Oil paint is a bit harder to wash off of your skin or clothes and usually requires the use of some kind of oil, like baby oil or mineral oil. Oil paints are generally very thick and vibrant.

If you like watercolors but also want a mix of acrylic paint, try using gouache paint. Watercolors would look great on the cover or spine of a book, whether you wanted to paint an actual scene, like a meadow or a house, or whether you just wanted to experiment with different colors.