From the outside a boring old book but open it up …

we cut out the centre of pages of volumes of the “history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire” (2 volumes so far, 6 left in the set) to create a hidden recess to store goodies away from prying eyes

We started by sealing the outside edges with Mod Podge, when it dried a Stanley knife was used to cut out a rectangle starting a few pages in and cutting down through to about three quarters of the way through the book. We then sealed the exposed cut edges with more mod podge

Tips from my crafty assistant: seal the outside of the pages for stability first; cut from the corners out for neatness; don’t make the rectangle too big to weaken the frame left behind.

To finish, the recess was decorated with stickers

I plan to put some chocolate money inside and label the wrapped gift ‘some valuable reading inside’