Bookish Crafts

DIY Paperback Book Tree (Part 1)

We often get book donations at the library. Sometimes they look brand new and other times the books seem like they have been sitting in a basement for 20 years (they probably have). The new books get put into the book sale, the gross books get recycled and that leaves the outdated worn books. I like to find unique uses for those books. Now that Thanksgiving is over it’s time to start thinking about Christmas! One of my favorite bookish crafts is to use paperback books to make trees. In this post I will show you one way to make them, next week I will show a second way! You can find the second way here.

Supplies:

  • Paperback book
  • Glue

Steps:

Step 1: gently tear off the cover of the book. If a few pages start to tear gently remove them.

Step 2: fold down the top right hand corner of the page until it reaches the spine.

Step 3: fold the page again to the spine of the book. Make sure that your folds are nice and crisp, this will help the books stay folded and make it easier in the end.

Step 4: gently move the folded page to the left. Repeat steps 2 & 3 for the remaining pages.

Step 5: this is what your tree should look like when you have completely folded all of the pages. Next we cut off the triangles on the bottom to give the tree base.

Step 6: glue the last two pages together. I used a glue stick but you could also use hot glue.

Step 7: once it is glued set the tree down and play with a pages a little to make them fan out how you want them. You can also  add glitter or paint to your tree. Then find a lovely place to display your paperback book tree!

 

In the next blog post I will show you how to create the book tree on the left!

* please note that you can use as many pages as you’d like. I typically use about 150. This way you can usually make 2 trees out of 1 paperback book. Just remember that the more pages you use the harder it is to fold the pages towards the end. It’s also fun to find paperback books that are different heights. I encourage you to play around with size and see what you like best!

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