A vintage look to charging your phone

Remember those massive phone directories? We relied on them daily to look up telephone numbers and addresses of friends, acquaintances and businesses. Now they are mostly a thing of the past--facing the same demise as corner phone booths and rotary phones. Perhaps phone books will make a comeback of sorts with this creative station for charging a mobile phone.

It's Betsy Skagen of Paper Calliope here. And unfortunately, I am old enough to remember all of those. In fact, I still remember the day when my niece came over to my house and had no idea how to use a rotary phone--and that was ages ago!

Awesome Stuff I used

Saffron Honey Cardstock--two sheets

Leaf Stripe Cardstock
Green Cardstock
Chipboard

Walnut Hollow Creative Versa-Tool

Plastic stencil sheets
Paper mache book
Texture paste
Copper glitter
Acrylic paints

Matte medium
Sticker letters
Vintage telephone die
Brown ink
3D foam adhesive

Vintage Cell Phone Charging Station Tutorial

Step 1  Cover the entire paper mache book with a coat of pale yellow acrylic paint. Let dry.

Step 2 Using the Creative Versa-Tool and some stencil plastic, cut out a stencil of a tangled lot of phone cords--the same kind of cords that used to dangle from kitchen phones--at least until they tangled into baseball-sized knots.

Hard to believe that someone would not wash her stencil in a timely fashion. Tsk tsk.

Step 3 With dry and roughly bristled brushes, apply acrylic paint to the portions of the book that you will not cover with paper. Coordinate your colorswith the paper. Use a heat guy to dry the paint between colors.

Step 4 Cut Saffron Honey Cardstock and Leaf Stripe Cardstock to fit the inside and outside of the book. Make sure to use both of the unique sides of the Saffron Honey Cardstock.

Step 5 Using matte medium, adhere the cardstock to the book. Coat the outside of the paper with matte medium also. Let dry.

Step 6 Cut a 6" x 6" piece of Saffron Honey Cardstock, coordinating solid green cardstock and chipboard. Cut all three pieces with a vintage telephone die.

Step 7 Adhere the telephone die cuts to the chipboard die cut. Distress the edges of the phone with brown ink.

Step 8 Lay the stencil flat on the front of the book and apply texture paste. Lift up and carefully reposition the stencil to cover the rest of the book and again apply texture paste. Liberally sprinkle the texture paste with copper glitter. Let dry.

Step 9 Distress the edges of the book with brown ink.

Step 10 Cut a hole in the bottom of the book, close to the binding. Make sure the hole is large enough to allow the end of the charging cord pass through it. Since the ends of these cords vary in width, you may want to find one as small as possible.

Step 11 Adhere the telephone die cuts to the front of the book with three-dimensional adhesive. Raise the rotary part of the telephone higher than the rest of the phone.

Step 12 Use three-dimensional adhesive to adhere "p-h-o-n-e-b-o-o-k" beneath the telephone.

That's all there is to it. Now all you have to do is plug in the charger and connect your phone inside your book and you have the cutest vintage mobile charge station around.

I hope everyone has a lovely week ahead. For those of you in the U.S. celebrating the 4th of July, I hope you find next weekend to be fun-filled, colorful and safe!