Glue gun betrayal at 2 AM ruined my book spiral

Was in my kitchen last Thursday making a folded book page spiral for a gift, and my cheap glue gun decided to drip hot glue all over the cover of a 1970s atlas I was using as a base. I tried scraping it off with a butter knife but it left this weird shiny smear that's now stuck forever. Has anyone else had luck fixing melted glue on an old book cover, or should I just paint over the whole thing?

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harper_owens24d agoMost Upvoted

Did you actually try heating the glue back up before you scraped it, or did you just go at it cold? Because hot glue that drips and then cools on a book cover is a whole different beast than the sticky mess you get when it's still warm. I've made that mistake before, thinking a butter knife would do the job, and I just ended up smearing it into the fibers. If you haven't already, hit it with a hairdryer on low for a minute and see if it softens enough to peel off in one piece, that might save you the paint route. But if it's truly fused into the cover, painting over a whole vintage atlas is a shame, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to make it presentable.