Book Sculptures

Not only do we love reading books, we love repurposing them! We started years ago with our book page wall and kept going from there. Have a few hours to spare and some old books? You can make yourself some really fun art!

With these book sculptures, you can go as simple or as complex as you’d like. To start, rip the front and back covers off but keep the spine intact. If the spine has very thick glue and is really stiff, work it a little by folding it in sections (you can use an Xacto knife to lightly score the glue it if it’s really stiff, but make sure to keep it intact.) The most basic shape, the cylinder, features just one fold per page and is fairly quick to construct – larger/more complex shapes can take around a couple of hours per book. Experiment with different page colours and folds and see what patterns emerge. Once you’re done, stack them, hang them and display them in your bookshop window (or your place of choice).

Tips: Larger books with a few hundred pages make the most robust sculptures – if you’re using books with fewer pages, you can always glue two books of the same height together after you’ve folded them. Keep your folded edges as sharp and even as possible. You don’t need any fancy tools – I just used the sharp edge of a ruler to go over each fold. Look up “book page sculptures” or “book page folding” for YouTube tutorials for inspiration and to get started.

Got any other fun bookish suggestions? Drop your favourite repurposed book craft below to share some more ideas!