While we've dove both into the Lovecraftian AND the Raimian before, something that you guys have requested quite a few times is how to make your own cursed Sumerian book of the dead. So I thought I would tackle the build and show you how to make your very own Necronomicon for cheap.

 

 

 

First, start with a pan. We've got to stain the pages to give it an aged look, so whatever book you get, try to find a pan about half the depth of the book. Now, prepare some REALLY strong tea, coke also works well BUT since it's got sugar in it it's sticky, so personally I prefer very strong black tea.

 

 

For the book, I chose this spiral bound sketchbook. I picked a sketchbook because the pages are blank, and are a bit heavier. But just dip it in the pan, then flipped it over and let all the tea soak in to the book. 

 

 

The next step is the waiting game, it can take up to a full 24 hours or more for the book to dry fully, so just open it halfway then flip through it occasionally to help keep the pages from sticking together. Hitting it with a hairdryer can also really help speed it up, so consider it. But once you're done you'll get this really nice marbled yellowed aged look that can really help sell the effect.

 

 

After it's dried sufficiently, cover the spine with a strip of black duct tape, keeps it sealed up and makes it look more like an old book.

 

 

Now get a section of newspaper approximately the same size as the cover and tear it around the edges and crinkle it up a bit.

 

 

 

Soak the newspaper in some white glue, and crinkle it up to start giving it a rougher "organic" texture like veins. 

 

 

After it dries a little, I carve slits for the eyes and mouth, you can make yours however you want, but this is just a generic take on the "Necronomicon" face.

 

 

I then did the same with another layer of newspaper, building up more depth. 

 

 

Now, for the "skin layer". Using the bathroom paper and white glue, "liquid latex alternative", you can get a skin looking texture really cheaply.

 

 

 

Now, once that is done drying, now it's time to start painting. Start with a basecoat of just basic peach/flesh toned paint, you can get it by mixing a little red, white, and brown together. 

 

 

Now, I added some darker sections (mixed a tiny bit of black and red into it, then blended with a very dry brush). Then added black paint the the "eyes" and "mouth" sections to try to add some depth to it and make it look more defined than it really is. (You could of course get it more defined by building up more newspaper and tissue layers to begin with, but that would take significantly longer to dry, so mess around with it to see what you like the most).

 

 

I darkened it a little bit more, you might want to go the film route and almost make it black, but really whatever appeals the most to you.

 

 

Now to the final questions, how to hide the spine on the inside, and what to draw inside (and with what?). For the spine question, just don't open it all the way, the pages easily flop over in such a way that they can keep the spine hidden, so just be careful with your angling and it shouldn't be a major concern. As for what to write... You can find plenty of collections of the Sumerian Alphabet on-line,  as for any illustrations you don't really need any real sketching skill, really if you're having trouble just dig up a copy of Gray's Anatomy (the book not the TV show), and trace stuff out of it and then put that in the book. Lots of drawings in that book that can look quite creepy when drawn in what looks like blood surrounded by Sumerian. As for the "ink", I used 2 parts fake blood (like theatrical, you want the kind that dries crusty and gets darker), a drop of red food coloring, and a drop of brown ink. Mixed together you get a nice dark red that looks like dried blood, the random chicken scratch in the above picture took me about a minute of just random scribbling, and in the proper lighting and not seen dead on would most likely look not so silly. So it doesn't take a lot of time or energy to get the book filled, AND you won't need to fill every page if you're hero is only going to be raising the dead from reading a page, so tops you'll only need to fill maybe 10 pages with chicken scratch and you can use editing tricks and different angles to make it look like its more pages. 

 

So there you go, your own cheap Necronomicon, hope it helps!