Project: Faux Bookshelves of Elegant and Scary Varieties

In addition to regular posts, I would like to have guest posts and also the occasional blook how-to project. I'll make an attempt to inspire you with a couple of faux bookshelf projects, including my favorite, the haunted bookshelf. 

You know, when you search the Internet for the term 'faux books' the objects that show up are not at all the common items from daily life, like most of the items I own. They are quite fru-fru and there are lots of gold-tooled leather bindings. Faux books are certainly a blook category in themselves. They are the types of items interior decorators might place in a den or library to impart an air of culture. A number of manufacturers and binderies make book walls and panels for book walls as shown in this video, but bookbinders, artists and crafters could easily make their own personal blook libraries. If you are in New York City and go to Scully&Scully on Park Avenue, you'll see them in every imaginable configuration. 

Here is a YouTube video about turning regular door into a book wall. You could apply the same principle to any cabinet door. Please don't cut the spines off of real books. You'll go to hell, really. (Well, actually I don't know if you will or not, but I told you I felt strongly about so-called altered books):

Over the last few years I've been expanding my collection of Halloween blook props. They are a recent addition because I never knew they existed. I play with them all year, but make a special attempt to put them out around the library during the Halloween season (yes, some consider it a season). Many of them are motion-activated and they tend to activate each other, that gets really wild and very noisy, too noisy for a library. I'll have to put a post up in October, but here is one I want to share now because you'll have to get started on it to have it ready for your haunted library or house. I haven't made one, but I would love to. I need to.

This is a three-part video on making your own haunted bookshelf. Every book-lover should probably have one. It uses real books, but you could easily substitute blooks made of wood, Styrofoam, cereal boxes, etc. Don't forget to look on YouTube for others, they are there. I just like the highbrow/lowbrow juxtaposition of the two videos.

I hope you enjoyed the first project post! Send pictures and descriptions, and/or add 

comments if you make something. We all want to see.

THE END