Upcylcing Book Crafts

As it starts to cool off outside, I’m thinking about being a homebody; curling up with some tea and a book. In honor of these autumn days (and lack of sunlight), here are some crafts to make out of discarded old books. I like to use the weird books you can find at the thrift store for these kinds of crafts. Cheap and probably if it’s ended up at the thrift store no one wants them for the quality writing anyway.

These cute clutches from See Kate Sew use the outside from a hardbound book with all the pages cut out and any kind of fabric you can imagine. Kind of makes me wish I’d thought of using this for a Librarian Halloween costume, last month.

If you buy a whole book for just the cover (to turn into a clutch of course) save the pages and make some origami out of them. I made some really fun origami ornaments for Christmas a few years ago. They were great pops of interest on our Christmas tree.

A Beautiful Mess has a great tutorial for Invisible Bookends using complete hardbound books. The perfect disguise! I’ve also seen something similar with L-brackets to make a vertical bookshelf.

This Hollowed Book Tutorial for an e-reader from Salt Tree is brilliant and easy to follow. J made one of these a few years ago and definitely could have used some of the hints included in this tutorial to take it from serviceable to stylish.