This is the miniature Victorian bookcase that I just finished. Scale 1:6. Will sit down and make books some day so that I can fill it up and make it all sophisticated looking.
So I've been crafting like crazy this past week, I think I've lost some feeling in my hands... BUT BEHOLD! Tons of new books and I made some cards again (which are a bit hipster this time, but I'm not even sorry :D). Making listings takes forever (and I have to work ;-;), so they'll be up in the shop coming Monday, along with pencil sets and some other new props.
So this week's craft is inspired entirely by mezcraft on craftster (a crafty forum I regularly frequent). It's set up a little differently than the usual tutorials because I sort of figured things out along the way, so there's no group picture for the materials used because I had to improvise a lot on this one.
This one is also slightly different because I wanted to focus on making it as eco-friendly as possible - i.e. repurposing old materials, recycling items, etc. Anyway, let's move on to the things you'll need for this crafty awesomeness.
Materials:
thin scrap wood - I used a clementine box that was left over from my clementine-eating adventures
exacto knife & ruler
paint & paint brush
hot glue gun
cardstock - I used the back of a cereal box
cardboard - you can find this in any recycling bin
a printer (preferably in colour)
any other little tchochkes you may have lying around
So the first thing you gotta do is to find some scrap wood. I actually thought about making this bookcase after eating all my clementines and wondering what to do with the leftover box. You can probably find some wood from Home Depot or any home renovation stores - the downside is they come in large sheets so you'll only use up a tiny portion of it.
Next, you have to cut out the pieces for your bookcase.
I used an exacto knife to cut out my pieces since the wood was pretty thin & easily cut. If your wood is harder, you may have to use a small saw.
This diagram shows you all the pieces you'll need:
The pieces that are the same colour should be the same size. Notice how the top & bottom pieces are wider than the back of the bookcase - this is to make sure that you cover not only the edge of that piece but also the side pieces. However much wider they are depends on the thickness of the wood - take the thickness, multiply that by two & add it on to the width of the back piece to get the width of your top & bottom pieces.
I added two shelves to my bookcase, but feel free to do more (or less). I cut them slightly narrower than the bookcase back to allow room for glue later. When you're done, you should end up with something similar to this:
Now comes the fun part: putting it all together!
I used a glue gun to glue all my pieces together (I tried super glue first, but that failed). I'm sure you can use other adhesives as well - wood working glue is probably the best choice. After assembling all your pieces together, you can paint it. I mixed some brown, black, and gold paint (for that extra sparkle ya know?) but I just as easily could've painted it grey with red polkadots.
That fourth picture shows what I printed my book covers on. Basically at this point, you'll need to go online, Google "book jackets" or "book covers" and download those images to use. I'm not sure exactly how copyright works here, but I wouldn't recommend using those covers for a commercial purpose - i.e. selling.
Then you can insert them into a word document, and resize them all - make sure their heights are shorter than the shelf space you've created. The ruler tool in MS Word is super useful here.
Once you print out all your book covers, it's time to cut them out and assemble them into little mini books. I used a thin pieces of cardboard and my trusty glue gun to emulate the pages within the books - if the book is thicker, I just stacked the cardboard pieces on top of each other until it reached the right thickness.
Once you have all your books ready, it's time to put them into your bookshelf (my favourite part!). You can arrange all the pieces first before gluing them down, or just go free form like I did. Here's what my bookcase looked like after this exercise:
Yes, that is indeed Stuart Little and The Secret Garden and Catch-22 and ... you get the idea. You may notice that little space I left on the 2nd shelf - this was for my little tchochke! I made a tiny vase with leaves out of hemp & paper & my hot glue gun, but other things like small game pieces (don't take it from a working game though!), vintage charms can be used as well.
This is what my final bookcase looked like (I redid that patchy paint job from before), and I attached a silver bail at the back because I actually made it into a necklace to wear. Tada!
As always, feel free to shoot me any comments & questions!
