Book Christmas Tree

I am so excited about this display!  It turned out better than I was expecting.

VFCC 2011 Book Christmas Tree

Inspiration: I forget how I originally came across the idea of a book Christmas tree, but I know the first picture I saw of one was from the University of San Francisco. If you Google “book Christmas tree” you’ll find some more examples.  My other favorite is this one from Media Tinker.

USF Book Christmas Tree

Book Tree from Media Tinker

Our library has a section right by the main doors with floor to ceiling windows.  It would be a perfect spot to display our tree to people in the library and those just walking by.

Book Selection:   I decided that I wanted to make the tree way back in the summer.  Since we don’t have a big enough set with green covers, we started saving any books with green spines that would have otherwise gone on the free cart – any books that were too gone to be repaired, or donations that we weren’t going to add to the collection.  As the time got closer and we needed more books, I took a cart upstairs and did some weeding.  Old biology textbooks were perfect.  Another idea would be to spray paint the spines of other color books if you wouldn’t get enough green ones, or intersperse in some red ones.  We also used other books on the free cart to fill out the middle and support the books on top.  The idea was that we wouldn’t make any of our resources unavailable to student who may need them.

Snowflakes were made from pages of old books.

Creating the Actual Display:  Because I’d never done this before, I started building the tree in one of our back rooms.  I wanted to make sure that we had enough books set aside to finish the tree.  I didn’t build the whole tree – just enough to make sure I had enough books.  Then we moved everything out to the lobby.  It took about 4 or 5 hours to set up the tree.  One thing to make sure is that each circle of books that you put down are the same thickness, or else your tree will be lopsided and unsteady.  The snowflakes and the star on top are cut out of pages from old books.  I got the instructions on making the star here.

Cost for the Entire Display:  Absolutely nothing!  It was much more time consuming than any of our other displays, but we didn’t have to buy anything for it.  With all of the positive feedback we’ve gotten from it, I’d say that we’ll save the books and put it up again next year.  Knowing that, when I take it down, I’ll number the books so it can go up again much faster.

Merry Christmas from the SRC!

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