As a book lover and archivist, I would feel like a vegetarian served ikizukuri if someone "gifted" my family with one of those items. (And yes, I checked and all of those books appear to have been in good to reasonable shape.)

Great idea for a lamp!

The problem with book-based decor is you actually have to deface a book to create it. I don't know that I could do it, but the ideas all do look nice I suppose.

So basically, ten fun ways to ruin perfectly good books? (Number 1 seems to me especially outrageous. Why would you do that to WTWTA?)

Librarian here. Lots of books aren't really worth trying to save for lots of reasons. However, I personally find most of these projects impractical or un-aesthetic. Sorry. If you can't UP cycle things so the final results are wonderful on their own, it's not worth the bother. To me, these qualify as "don't bother". (Not meaning to insult the makers. Just MY opinion.)

As a book reader, collector, and librarian, I say pick an awful book and have at it. You could use a mass market or trade paperback, i.e. one with a destroyed cover (I found an old messed up copy of Once Is Not Enough) that I've been saving for a book project. Perfect for the book lamp!

I'm not a purist about books, but I expected the ideas would be more based in the content of the books! I was imagining, like, a "Wild Things" forest room or something.

We were given a clock made from a child's book. It looks nice enough, but I've always figured that my kid would rather be able to read the book than the clock.

Yeah, the outrage that always seems to pop up when people dare(!) deface a book always seems a bit melodramatic. The ones that get torn up probably were nothing special to begin with, and the ones used for their covers are often still in print and not exactly a commodity. I love books, and collect books, and am very careful about how I treat my books, but that 1920 guide to Welsh that I got at the Goodwill which was a day from being thrown in the recycling, is not a holy priceless artifact. Yeah, it might be in great shape, but that doesn't mean anything except that it is pristine junk. The guide to home repair from 1940 might be cute, but unless you have a house from 1940 and tools from 1940 and no internet, then probably it isn't super useful, either. Sure, maybe it would be great if we could keep everything forever, but a lot of the old books at Goodwill really are often junk and if you pass on them because you would feel disrespectful cutting up a book to make it into [X] Decoration, then you can look forward to enjoying it in a couple months as a pizza box, or whatever else the recycling plant puts it to. A useless, pretty book you get to try and make a goofy vignette on your desk really isn't any more authentic or useful than the one you get to cut the pages out of and make a lampshade, so I find it a bit tiring when people get their panties in a bunch about this kind of thing.

Anyway, I don't mind most of these, but they kind of don't seem like anything special. I definitely would prefer a book wreath to most of these projects.

I have some tattered books a few of the ideas would work with.

You know, the old "these books were nothing special to begin with" excuse that always gets brought up in these posts becomes ivalid once you can SEE that a perfectly lovely* copy of "Gulliver's Travels" has been hacked into with a saw. I'm all for book projects like this, in fact, I'm probably going to make planters for my cactus plants like the one above, but that's what outdated reference books are for.

*I realize some people would rather have a shiny new one, I just love old and tattered.

The only way someone destroying a book to use for a project is awful is if the book didn't belong to them. If I pay for a book, choosing to read it or use it for wallpaper is my decision alone.

However, I think the lamps and wall art could easily be created (with better results) using scrapbooking papers.

I am actually on both sides of this fence. On one side- I have been a book lover since before I could read, and the thought of tearing apart any of my friends to make decor makes me cringe.

On the other side- I have read some truly awful books and would love to take at least one copy of those books OUT of circulation. (Don't believe me? Wander over to Amazon and read the reviews of Wild Animus by Rich Shapero. Horrible book. The only thing I enjoyed about it was the intro.)

But- I think you could solve both issues by printing out page copies and using those. That way you have the same asthetic, but you didn't take a book apart to do it.

I agree with Holler here. If you have a book you read/cherish/plan to pass on, don't use it for a craft project. Still, not every book is sacred. If a book is just collecting dust (or another copy can easily be obtained) why not make something you enjoy out of it?

Oh, defacing unwanted books is not a problem for me (as long as it doesn't suggest doing that with ANY book, most especially Library books!! I sometimes wonder...)

We librarians weed our collections regularly, eliminating outdated science or unloved fiction that nobody is reading any more, to make room for new books. (Most of us face the fact that buildings won't get bigger, so something has to give.) Many of these books are offered for sale in our used books sale, but many are pulped to make more paper. If somebody can use the pictures or other pages for crafting, why not? (Plus people donate books all the time, only a fraction of them worth adding to the circulating collections. The rest go to book sales or whatever. Sometimes crappy old art books have frame-able pictures.)

But you need to know books. It's sad when a valuable collectible gets trashed. And weird things fit that category. Someone donated a coffee table book about Harley Davidson motorcycles, once. It seemed like any other publisher's remainder photo book, but it turned out to be worth several hundred dollars! So we sold it!

I understand that some books are past their prime condition. But I wonder when I look at these crafts if these are the only book-related items in the room? Does a kid look at these and form the impression that the main thing books are good for is to cut them up and use them as craft material?

sherryBinNH..thank you for the comments.since. I trust your knowledge and compassion ,since I am a BOOK LOVER. It is hard for me to justify upcycling a book. I am still pushing for readers not to dog ear pages,so I make bookmarkers out of recycled materials.leave them everywhere.

We need to be very selective in whom we give these up cycled books to.Personally,I think we are In a serious stage of discarding reading material of many sources. Let's don't through out the baby with the wash water. When I give my 7 year grandson a book, I want him to know it is to READ.
Let's pack them up to leave at laundry mats, grocery store,hospitals,doctors office,
School cafeterias,the beach,church, homeless shelters or low income housing units. They will be read by folks at all these places.

You have given me a little wiggle room to "maybe" follow up on some of the crafty ideas posted here and other sites...... before we know it there will be a book on how to recycle books.:) :)

EXACTLY!!!!!