Contact paper to the rescue: Ruining and then rescuing my e-reader cover

Turning a book cover into an iPad coverThis past January, I made half a dozen creative resolutions. One was to experiment with new ideas and not be afraid to make mistakes. Or at least make them, afraid or not.

My e-reader cover project falls into this category. I wrote previously about my first attempt to recycle an old book into a cover for an iPad. It looked good didn't keep the iPad from falling out. Ouch!

I fixed this problem and in the process, discovered a better way to attach the elastic that holds the device in place.

This week, I made another kind of mistake. When I cut the pages out of a book, I sliced the back spine. I did this in 3 books before I realized my butchery.
Failed upcycling project
Pretty ugly. Thanks to the book-binding tape I attached to the inside, the slice didn't threaten the cover's integrity. But I wanted to sell this. Could I fib and say the rip was just part of the "gently used" character of the book? Nope. I was tempted, though, because the book itself seemed rare and its cover art was unusual. 
Parveen, a book by Anne Mehdei
I promised myself that I'd be more gentle with the next few books. But like an upcycling King Kong, I kept slicing the binding. What to do? I didn't want to give up -- looking for just the right old book was too fun.

After sulking for a few days, an idea popped into my head -- what about wrapping the book cover in clear Contact paper? I had a roll on hand for another project. 
Contact paper to the rescue
My husband cautioned me that it could make the cover illustration cloudy. But I had to try. What did I have to lose? Luckily, the paper was just opaque enough to hide the slice but not obscure the cover art. See, you can hardly tell.
Turning a book into a Kindle cover
It took a few tries to make the inside look presentable. But overall, I'm happy with the result. In fact, the Contact paper makes the cover more durable. I'd turned a flaw into a feature! I guess this is what Julie Fei-Fan meant in her Cloth Paper Scissors article about her process of ruin-then-rescue. Sometimes you have to ruin something and then rescue it to discover something new.