DnD Mimic Prop/Notebook

My name is Hannah, and I am a grade 12 student at South Carleton High School. I made this book as part of my altered book art project for school. I was inspired by my new love of D&D and thought I would create a prop and or notebook for fellow D&D lovers to use. The inside part of the mouth is optional and is not necessary if you’re planning on using this as just a notebook. However, I do recommend all components of this instructible to create the best final product.

• A book
• An old book with pages that are stitched together if you’re making just a prop
• A hardcover notebook if you intend to take notes
• Scrap paper
• Mod Podge
• Leather or some other fabric
• Fake doll eyes
• on Amazon
• Fake teeth
• on Amazon
• Metal wire
• Air dry clay
• Watercolours
• Fabric and or leather paint (I used red, black and brown)
• Hot glue plus a hot glue gun
• Scissors
• Superglue
• Acetone to fix superglue mistakes
• Exacto knife
• Lighter
• Cardstock

You can choose to skip this step however it does make the cover-making easier. First carefully remove the pages from the book. This is why it’s important to get a book that is stitched together and not just glued to the cover. To remove the cover, you can use an exacto knife to cut the stitching holding the book to the pages carefully.

Use the air-dry clay to create a raised bumpy surface on the front of the cover near the edge. You will want the clay to overhang on the edges of the cover in order to support the teeth. If you would like to have a bottom row of teeth, use a smaller portion of the clay to make the gums on the bottom. Use the eyes and teeth to make indents where you would like to have them placed. Make sure to remove the eyes and teeth from their placement after so that the clay can dry fully. Don't worry the indents for the teeth and eyes will stay as the clay dries.

First, take a small strip of leather long enough to go around the gum line and glue it folded in half. Then take this strip that you’ve created, glue it along the gum line, but still leave some of the clay showing. Starting at the front, glue the leather so that it covers the top edge of the gum line to hide the piece we just created. Create folds in the leather where you would like the eyes to be placed and use hot glue to create the pinched areas between the sockets. This will create the appearance of eyelids. You should be able to easily insert and remove the eyes from the folds you created. Continue to glue and take the leather around the rest of the book until the whole book is covered.

If you would like to change the colour of the leather and the clay that you used, I recommend using a combination of leather and fabric paint. I only had black leather paint so I used black plus brown fabric paint for the cover of the leather and then I used a combination of red and black for the colour of the gums. You should do at least two coats and don’t be afraid if it looks a little patchy because it will give dimension and detail to the cover.

Place a small dab of superglue in each of the indents that we made along the gumline. Then simply press the teeth into those holes and allow the glue to dry.

Once your cover is painted and dried, put small dabs of superglue within the folds that you intend to put the eyes in. Insert the eyes and let it dry. I decided to pull and create drips of superglue around some of the eyes. My superglue does get cloudy when it dries so I did this with the intent to have it look like snot or mucus. You don’t have to do this but it could be painted green or red later on to add more detail if you like.

Cut a piece of black cardstock paper to go on the inside of the book. This will cover any glued seams of the leather and overall just make the inside look neater.

If you want to add some extra detail or an aged appearance to your book, I would recommend burning the edges. Please be cautious and use adult supervision even if you are an adult you should still have an extra person with you. If you're going to do this, make sure that you do it in a safe environment and have prepared ways to extinguish the flame if necessary. When I did this, it was snowing outside, so my game plan was to shove it in the snow. However, it was also windy so I didn’t really need to do that because it is very difficult to burn the edges of a book. I recommend spreading the pages open a little bit rather than keeping them pressed tight together, this will allow oxygen to the flame and hopefully increase the fire. I used a lighter to burn the pages. You can also use a barbecue lighter which would allow more distance from the flame for safety.

If you intend to use this project as just a notebook, you can go ahead and skip to the very last step; however, if you would like to have detail for the inside of the mimic's mouth, just continue the steps as normal. I wanted to do a papier-mâché of sorts for the inside of the book just so that everything had a consistent texture in terms of paper. Because of this, I created a paper pulp. I just mixed small pieces of paper in water and ripped and squeezed it until it was made up of even smaller pieces. To drain paper pulp you can use a strainer, but you’ll collect more if you scoop and squeeze the water out of the paper. Lastly, throw it in a paper bag with some glue.

I want to say randomly, but not randomly place the paper pulp onto the page to create a ridge-like texture. It should look like the inside of your mouth with a ridged texture. If you don't feel super creative you can just copy what is shown in the picture here. Just make sure that for the bottom half of the mouth, there is a flat space in between for the tongue to stick out of the book. Once you’ve created the raised texture that you’re happy with Take small strips of the same paper and dip them into a mod-podge water mixture and use it to cover the bumps and attach to the rest of the page. I added red into my mod-podge water solution with the intent to have it dry red, but it just stayed pink.

Once the Paper Mâché is mostly dry, you can go in with a mix of red and purple watercolours. Concentrate the darker colours at the centre of the book and in between the ridges in the mouth. Keep painting with the watercolours until you are happy with the colour.

Cut two pieces of leather that are just longer than the width of one page. Take a piece of metal wire and bend it in half to sandwich between the two pieces of leather. Glue the pieces together, leather-metal wire-leather, then cut the end of the tongue into a snake-like shape. Next paint the tongue with a mix of black and red fabric paints to match the inside of the mouth. The wire inside of the tongue allows it to be posed and bent. Make sure some of the wire is sticking out of the end of the tongue so that it can be inserted into the spine of the book. Cut a small slit where you’d like to place the tongue and push the wire so that it sticks out through the spine of the book.

Before calling it a day, make sure to re-glue the pages into the spine part of the cover. Now you have a finished D&D mimic prop.