How to Make a "Book Shelf"

We love books but when the information in them is no longer relevant and they languish in a thrift store, it gets our wheels turning for another unique upcycle! When we saw the book challenge, we chuckled because this Instructable might not be what you'd expect: an old book turned it into an upcycled "book shelf"! Not to be confused with the book shelf you all know to store your books in! But a hardcover book made into a shelf! If that’s as clear as mud, you’ll see what we mean as the Instructable unfolds.

It all starts with this 23 year old IKEA corner shelf find. Made in 1999, it conjures up Prince’s iconic song. And people having meltdowns about what would happen in Y2K once the clock struck midnight and computers couldn’t recognize the year 2000! 1999 is the same year that PayPal launched and was voted one of the 10 worst business ideas.

Many catastrophic breakdowns were avoided in 1999. But things always have a way of working out for the best; just like this project! Now we’re resurrecting these shelves from the same era and saving them from landfill! Another catastrophe avoided!

[If you’re looking for some of the things we used, we’ve got you covered. As an Amazon Associate, while we do earn from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you, we proudly donate all earnings to Alzheimer’s research annually. See our full disclosure.]

If you can’t find 1/4 round shelves, then maybe a half-round shelf like this cut in half. Or draw an arc on scrap wood using the method we used for our wooden wall art diy and cut your own!

These corner shelves are a 3-shelf unit, but we’re only using one for this project. If you can’t find a similar IKEA shelf at the thrift store, cut your own out of scrap wood. These are just over 8″ along each edge. If you cut your own, you can cut them exactly to fit the width of your hard cover book (ours is almost 9″ wide).

The book really should be hard cover vs. soft cover because you need the strength for support.

For this project, you will need:

• Hardcover book
• Lotus Bloom stencil
• Texture paste. To make your own, you'll need baking soda, Elmer's School Glue and acrylic paint of your choice.
• Plastic putty knife/ scraper
• Paint of your choice (we used red)
• Metal book end
• Plastic woodworking ratchet clamps (ours are MasterCraft)
• Paint sticks
• Pencil
• #6 flat heat screws
• Cordless drill
• Punch (as wide as the screw heads)

We’re using a red mineral paint but use whatever paint you have on hand. Don't waste your money on expensive texture paint if you already have these things on hand: you can make your own texture paste by mixing 3 tablespoons of baking soda, 1 tablespoon of Elmer's School Glue, and 1 tablespoon of acrylic paint (or chalk paint if that's what you have on hand).

Clean the shelf and give it a scuff sand. Wipe away all dust. I clamped one end of the stencil and tape down the other end.

Over the black shelf, the colour is pretty subtle, so I stencilled on 2 coats of paint. Normally you have let to this partcular paint dry 2 hours between coats. But because I offload most of the paint onto paper towels so the brush is dry, I only had to wait an hour.

I don’t usually clean my stencils between uses. But because I’m using a texture paste in the next step, I did clean with a baby wipe.

The lotus bloom stencil on the shelf is beautiful but I’m interested in trying raised stencilling for the first time too. So I remove the dust jacket and stencilled right onto the hard cover with the texture paste. It produces an awesome raised effect!

Before you lift the stencil, let the texture paste dry for 5 minutes. If you lift any sooner, it could spread and you want it to keep its shape.

Open the book to a page you want to display. I didn’t split the book exactly in half because I love the bagpiper on the page I want to display. You’ll notice further ahead that my black and red colour scheme on the shelf ties in with the kilt colours! But you can use whatever colour scheme you happen to find in your own book!

True story about why I chose this page (I know I digress). When I was a little kid, my grandmother gifted my sister and I Schmid Bros porcelain music wind ups (see last pic). My sister’s was a pretty maiden in a blue flowing dress and I got a Scottish lass in a kilt. Being young and naive, I burst into tears because my sister got the ‘pretty’ one with a melody to match (mine plays the folk song Blue Bells of Scotland). My younger self didn’t understand how special mine was at the time.

In retrospect, that gift had a lot of influence on me stylistically, because plaid has always been my thing. If you’ve watched our recent YouTube videos, (like the one at the start of this post) you’ll notice I practically live in Hub’s plaid shirt.

Ironically, the start of each book section has a similar lime green colour as the socks and pom pom on my Scottish lass (green is my favourite colour)!

One good thing about aging? Maturity clarifies perspective. I’m so honoured that my grandmother chose the Scottish music doll for me! The page I chose to display in this project is a reminder to appreciate what I have, and of how much my grandmother loved me! Oh, how I miss her!

Isn’t this Scottish lass music doll beautiful?!

Back to the upcycled book! With a pencil, draw a line that’s parallel to the bottom of the book where you want to place the shelf. The thickness of the shelf is 5/8″. So when you make your markings below that line, be sure it’s half the measurement of the thickness of the shelf to centre them with the wood. Place marks at even intervals as shown in the picture above. Our book is almost 9″ wide, so we’ll put 5 screws on each side.

Sure you could drill right through the cover to support the shelf, but with what we have in mind, that would be ugly. Who wants to see screws sticking out of a cover? Not me! Accordingly, there are four key steps to successfully mounting a corner shelf in a book:

1. Use a bookend to prop one side of the book pages up so they stand 90 degrees. This is important because if you don’t drill the pages as they will sit when the shelf is in place, you’ll get wrinkles.
2. To help stiffen and support the pages as you drill, clamp a paint stick at either end. One of the paint sticks should sit behind the drill markings you just made in the book. You must support the back page with wood or the paper will splay as the drill exits the paper and the shelf won’t sit tight to the book pages. You want smooth exit holes!
3. Countersink the screw heads (more about how to do that in the next section).
4. Predrill holes the same or slightly larger than the screw shank. We originally used a smaller bit (seen below), but a larger one will allow you to tighten the screws against the shelf giving you a seamless look against the book pages.

Since the shelf is black, I added painters tape to the two edges so I can see the pencil lines. Mark the shelf in the same intervals as you did the book pages. Predrill straight into the marks as shown.

Now, line the shelf up with the lines made earlier in the book (stencil side up).

Before adding screws, use a punch to remove paper from the first few pages; this allows you to ‘countersink’ the head of the screw so that it’s flush with the paper and the book covers will close flat. If you prefer, you can bring back the bookend, instead of the shelf, for this step.

Vacuum up any paper debris as you go. I use an attachment that’s typically used to clean a keyboard so I don’t accidentally suck the paper from the book into the hose! You’ll see that in the video.

Add screws onto one side. Flip the book around and screw into the other side. The beauty of this process is that no screws show on the outside of the pretty cover with the raised stencilling!

Once all the screws are in, you can now stand the book up to display it! But first, if you prefer, you can add some double faced tape around the edges of the cover so you can hide the screws. However, if you follow the 3 keys steps above, I don’t find this necessary. The book should stand just fine as-is once the shelf is attached.

Here is the finished "book shelf"! Scotland is somewhere on that globe!

Because the book is open, you don’t necessarily see the raised stencil cover unless it’s on display somewhere that’s not against a wall. I'll move it somewhere i can view it from both sides. I’m definitely going to play around more with this idea. Besides, I have two more shelves left!

If you like books, check out another unique project: our DIY bookends. And if you like to learn new skills, don’t forget to get your craft mojo on at Birdz of a Feather and subscribe! You can also follow us on Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.