Small crafts for the bookish.

Small projects for book people — using the covers you've saved, the books you've read, or the ones on your shelf. Photos CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, credited to the makers below.

A clear glass fillable ornament packed with miniature book covers and labeled with a decorative year numeral, hanging on a Christmas tree lit with colorful lights.

Photo: ecmstchr083 on Instructables

A year of reading, sealed in a clear ornament

A book-club tradition: collect the miniature or rolled-up covers of everything you read this year, tuck them inside a fillable clear ornament, and label it with the year. A quiet reading journal that doubles as a keepsake, one glass bauble per year.

Tutorials

A miniature hand-bound book with a faded Harry Potter-style cover stood on end beside a US quarter for scale on a plain backdrop.

Photo: hchute on Instructables

Mini-book charms and ornaments

Bind fingertip-sized signatures, wrap them in a trimmed sliver of a favorite cover, and hang them from a ribbon. One tiny book next to a quarter for scale is the whole punchline — a keepsake that fits in a palm or on a tree branch.

Tutorials

A papercut keyhole shape cut from book pages glowing warm orange from a hidden tealight, tucked between a row of real books on a dark shelf.

Photo: FernMakes on Instructables

Book-page light-up ornaments

Cut a keyhole or scene out of a folded book page, tuck a battery tealight behind it, and slip the whole thing onto a shelf so the warm light glows through the type. Somewhere between a lantern and a shadow box, and perfectly at home wedged between the books it came from.

Tutorials

A small hand-made wooden bookcase filled with tiny colorful handmade books with a black quill pen tucked into the top shelf, photographed against a backdrop of stacked vintage hardcovers.

Photo: Indeluin on Instructables

Miniature library scene

Bind thumbnail-sized signatures, wrap them in scraps of retired covers, and line them up in a tiny wooden bookcase with a quill for scale. A whole imaginary reading room that fits next to a stack of real books, proving the collection never really ends.

Tutorials

Four coasters made from vintage Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and Trixie Belden book covers arranged on a kitchen counter, with a deep blue wine glass resting on one of them.

Photo: Bannockburn on Instructables

Book-cover coaster set

Trim squares of worn-out covers — Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, whatever the library wouldn't take back — back them with felt or cork, and set them out as a matched coaster set. Each one carries the fingerprint of the book it came from, warm glass included.

Tutorials

A small brown leather-bound mini book pendant with a gold filigree ornament and a red gem clasp, resting open-face on the printed page of a full-size book.

Photo: starforest on Instructables

Mini-book pendant jewelry

Sew a fingertip-sized signature, wrap it in a scrap of leather, add a small filigree clasp, and loop it onto a chain. A whole novel — or a blank one waiting to be written in — worn close to the collarbone, sitting open on the pages of its larger cousin.