My Nana sent me a picture of a Christmas tree formed entirely from the contents of someone’s library. Naturally, I had to make one myself. I even have some advice for you if you want to make your own.

I wasn’t planning on having a Christmas tree. We usually celebrate the holiday with my parents, and even they don’t normally have a tree (though I love having trees–they smell so good). We celebrate Hanukkah first and foremost, so a tree is an afterthought, if it’s given any thought at all. And since trees are probably not as easy to come by in Boise as they are in Oregon, I decided to make this one out of books instead.

I didn’t look at any sort of tutorial before diving into tree-crafting, and I ended up tearing it down and rebuilding it so that it was more stable. Somewhere along the way I ended up with half a layer, so that I was adding books in a spiral instead of in layers, which I do not recommend because it’s very unstable that way.

The best way to start is with a thick, heavy base (so break out those coffee table books and text-books). You want to create a kind of star or flower shape. It works best, structurally speaking, for all your books to be roughly the same thickness for each level. You can use thin books (like poetry books) or even thin notebooks to even out layers. In the middle, there will be a great gaping hole, and you’ll want to build this up too, so that the tree has a core in the center. I used books in order of their size (coffee-table to hardcover to trade paperback to mass-market) and tried to keep layers as even as possible. You want to create layers that each get smaller very gradually starting at the bottom and working up.

My tree stands at about 4 and a half feet tall with its topper (you can go for something more Christmas-y but I liked the little Shakespeare book). It’s so much fun, but I think it needs some decoration. Have any ideas for what would look good on the tree? Let me know in the comments.