Fabulous Bookends from Another Fabulous Etsy Seller

I rarely, if ever, use bookends. Not because I don't love them, but because my shelves are full from one end to the other, and therefore there is no room for bookends. But one day, I will have more shelves... and so need more bookends, and I will definitely be revisiting Knob Creek Metal Arts' Etsy shop for my purchases:

(Tentacle Attack Bookends, $39.99)

(Nerd Bookends, $39.99)

(Novel Bookends, $39.99)

(Raven Bookends, $39.99)

Browse all of Knob Creek Metal Arts bookends, or their entire store (they also have fun keyhooks, leash hooks, personalized bar signs, etc.) Enjoy!

Bookish Gift Bows

Just in time for the holidays! Because we all know that no matter how early we finish our shopping (or how late we start it), there's always the wrapping to follow. Modified from original instructions in Playing With Books, I've been trying my hand at some handmade bows made out of book pages:

Let me begin by saying this: I am not a particularly crafty person. I do not have a lot of patience for small, difficult things. Like knitting. I hate knitting. And anything that involves threading a needle. I like shortcuts. I like crafts that involve minimal steps, minimal supplies, minimal tools. If I can do this, you can do this.

To start, you'll need:

- Tape (preferably double-sided tape, but you can use single sided if that's what you have on hand. I did, and it worked fine. Just be prepared to roll lots of little tape circles so you can mimic double-sided tape.)
- Scissors
- A book you are willing to cut up (this is the hardest part, I promise).

Step 0: Take a deep breath. You are about to cut pages out of a book. My only recommendation for making this easier is to go to your local library and buy a book out front that you intend to cut up, which prevents forming any attachment to it. I chose The Naming of Names, a book about the history of plant names, because it had nice typesetting and a luscious, creamy paper stock, and is a subject about which I have zero interest. So.

Step 1: Cut 9-12 strips of book pages, approximately 3/4 in x 7-9 inches (you can be flexible in the size of your strips, but you'll definitely want them all to be consistent). If you cut longer strips, you'll most likely need more strips to fill in the bow. Longer strips = taller bow. Shorter strips = less required, but smaller final product.

Step 2: Place a small piece of double-sided sticky tape (or a small circle of single-sided sticky tape) in the center of the strip. Fold one end down, and twist end 180 degrees before affixing to the tape. Think of the twist in the Breast Cancer Awareness ribbons. Do that. Make sure that when you do this, you don't cover up all of the tape, as you need some to stick down the other end, too.

Step 3: Do the same thing on the other side. Note: If you don't think in 3 dimensions, as I don't, you might have to twist it a few different ways to figure out how to get the ends to align in the middle like this. You're not alone.

Step 4: Repeat step 3 over and over and over again.

Step 5: Place a small square of tape in the center of one of the loops, and place another inside it perpendicular to the first one. Place another piece of tape inside this next one, and keep layering loops on top of each other, varying the angle of the strips. They'll naturally push themselves up into a bow shape as you get taller and taller.

Presto digito! You have a book bow. Happy Wrapping!

---

As an aside, I'm counting this as one of my 100 lovely things on my 26 by 26 list. 

Playing with Books: The Art of Upcycling, Reconstructing and Reimagining Books | Jason Thompson | Quarry Books | 9781592536009 | $24.99 Paperback |152 pages | April 2010 | Buy from an independent bookstore near you

The Most Accomodating Bookshelf Imaginable

HOLY GUACAMOLE! If you are like me, and you organize your books by anything other than size and/or the day you put it on the shelf, these will be your new favorite bookshelves ever, because now it no longer matters if you have a book about sailboats whose author's name starts with an S and is oversized, because the oversized books will now fit on your rubber bookshelves. Oh yeah, I'm going to need those. Because god knows I don't have enough bookshelves in my house already.

via Gizmodo (via my lovely husband via Google+)

The Oh-My-God-It's-the-Best-Bookcase-Ever Bookcase

A bookcase that spells words. Modular. Customizable. = Must. Have. Now.

(By Saporiti, price unlisted - though as my mother-in-law says, "If you have to ask how much it costs, it costs too much.")

So... if price were no object, what would your bookcase say?

Books Are Not Made for Furniture (Quote of the Day)

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. - Henry Ward Beecher

Writing Elsewhere: Books Do Furnish My Home

This article originally appeared at BiblioBuffet, a wonderful book-ish site that is well worth a browse if you have a moment and a regular follow if you have several moments. Thanks to Lauren and Nicki for editing and publishing and giving me a shot as a guest columnist.
“What better place to kill time than a library? And for me, what better way to get to know someone than her choice and treatment of books?”
So asks antiquarian bookseller and amateur biographer Margaret Lea in Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale (a title, by the way, not to be missed by any booklover out there). While I myself am not an antiquarian bookseller—despite whatever hopes and dreams I may have to that effect—I find that I, too, often wander unintentionally into the role of amateur biographer when studying another’s library.
After all, Margaret’s is an excellent point: what better way to get to know someone than through his or her library? Or —as the case may be—lack thereof? When I enter someone else’s home for the first time, I subconsciously scan the room for shelves, bookcases, the odd title on an end-table with a bookmark in its place.
No bookshelves in the main living areas? Not a reader.
Bookshelves overflowing with college textbooks you refuse to unload? Reads, but only under duress.
Rows of nonfiction, business titles, how-to books, the like? Does not read fiction; or, perhaps worse, finds fiction not worth display.
One small shelf packed with a range of titles? Books aren’t worth the space, but are worth the time.
You get the picture. These may not be fair assumptions to make—and of course they vary greatly depending on a great many factors—but I am telling the truth when I say I cannot stop my brain from following this course.
So I ask myself: If I turned the tables back onto my own library, what am I telling people about my story?
Shelves of books on Irish history, language and culture speak to my husband’s Irish background, and my college studies. Further shelves of history tell the same college story. The lack of any other nonfiction is the most glaring exception here; we both lean heavily towards fiction. Our fiction collection is broken out into shelves of classics and modern fiction (anything written in the twentieth century and beyond), with a special shelf reserved for the Robert Jordan-esque fantasy novels we both devour.
But more important even than the skewing of books on the shelves, at least to me, is the fact that books quite literally litter our house. Our living room walls are lined with the infamous IKEA Billy bookcases, teetering and in one case even leaning quite precariously, all stacked end-to-end with titles; the coffee table shelf is lined with stacks of books and wordy games (Scrabble and the Booklover’s edition of Trivial Pursuit). Books line the window ledges along the staircase, and framed photographs of antique book bindings hang on the walls.
And that’s just the first floor.
Clearly, we are sending a message here. This is in part due to practicality: between my husband and myself, we just have too many books to fit tucked away into any one room. But even if I had a dedicated room for books, I don’t think I could stand to part from them. For mine is a life not just filled with books, but lived among them.
When I bring work home, I sit in our office and stare longingly at the shelves of ARCs (“advanced review copies”) waiting to be reviewed on the shelf. When I watch television, my eyes stray fondly over the well-loved copy of Love in the Time of Cholera on the shelf—the first book my now-husband ever lent to me—and the broken spine of Mark Helprin’s Winter's Tale, which I read the first year I moved to New York.
When I sit down to write, I always sit in the living room, where a glance shows me a row of newly-added titles on the shelf, originally purchased to act as the centerpieces at our wedding. There is Father of the Bride, which we found at a local antique store and sat on my father’s table; there is Love: A History, a slim paperback I have never heard of but will someday read. Each book is a memory, and an open invitation to discover or re-discover some new thought or idea.
My library lives around me, and I in it. What it says to someone else probably lies most in that other person. What it says to me, however, lies in my understanding of the story of each book, how it came to be in my possession; my knowledge of the notes carefully written in the margins of read and re-read favorites; the characters yet to be met in new titles by old authors. My library is a living, breathing, evolving entity, and whatever it says to visitors, to me it says home.

Books Do Furnish My Home

“What better place to kill time than a library? And for me, what better way to get to know someone than her choice and treatment of books?” - The Thirteenth Tale

Hop on over to BiblioBuffet this week for my guest column on my own choice and treatment of books, and what my library says about me as a reader.

A Room Without Books (Quote of the Day)

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” - Marcus Aurelius Cicero

Bookworm Stool

I'm not convinced that a cardboard stool would actually make a very sturdy seat, but I love this anyway.

Available from Form, Function, Style for $59