Leather-Bound Floating Book Shelf

My partner is a voracious reader and always has a pile of "To Be Read" books (aka: the TBR stack).

We have a great little corner reading nook, so I made this shelf to go there and hold these books.

The finished shelf looks like the spine of a giant vintage leather-bound book sticking out of the wall.

So, it's a Book . . . Shelf!

It's fun and unique, but also functional.

And bonus: it's covered in genuine leather repurposed from an old reading chair!

Step 1: TLDR; Just Give Me the Highlights

Here's a quick overview of the main points of the project without going into details.

Images 1 - 4 show the completed bare shelf.

Images 5 - 13 show the key points in the build, which are as follows:

1. make and mount a simple subframe shelf that will be hidden, that will support an outer casing
2. make a frame that will become the outer casing; test fit it onto the hidden shelf
3. create the book spine shape on the case with foam board
4. cover with more foam board to finalize the shape
5. cover foam board with craft foam to bulk it up and smooth out the shape
6. use spray glue to wrap the casing with genuine leather
7. add faux pages and headbands to case ends
8. add gold details
9. add gold lettering
10. put the finished book-shaped case on the hidden shelf, it's done!

Step 2: Build Hidden Support Shelf

This is the hidden shelf that supports the outer casing. It is made from some recycled 1/2" plywood that had been a small cabinet at some point.

There are two main pieces that are 34 inches long; one is 6 inches wide and the other is 3 1/2 inches wide. These were cut using a small table saw, but other wood cutting tools would work as well.

I cut out several triangular support pieces using a band saw.

All of these pieces were put together with wood glue and brad nails.

Step 3: Hang Shelf

On the wall where I wanted to mount this I found and marked two wall studs (marked with tape).

The shelf was drilled in the desired location for the studs and I used two 3" screws to attach the shelf to the wall. The screws are pan-head type, and the holes in the shelf that they go through are just big enough that the screws don't bite into the wood at all, but just slip through the wood. So the shelf is hanging on these screws, in a sense, although it is tight against the wall.

The screws are fastened near the top of the back piece of the shelf as high up as possible while still being put in perpendicular, which is important.

This way the screws act kind of like a fulcrum point and the weight of the shelf and contents is transferred through the supports and back to the wall in a very efficient manner. Two lower screws could be added, but for the few pounds of books this will hold, I felt this was sufficient.

In case you notice the discrepancy, I ended up moving this 2 inches to the left after photos 1 and 2 were taken.

Step 4: Prepare Leather

We had this leather reading chair that was just huge and old, and unfortunately needed to go away.

Rather than donate it, I decided to strip and down and reuse the frame if possible and find some ways to repurpose the excellent quality leather.

The leather covering was carefully picked apart and organized into groups based on size. There turned out to be a lot of leather, more than I'll probably ever use up. Want some?

Step 5: Create the Case Frame

The internal frame of the casing was made with a little bit of 1/2" plywood along with some 1/4" MDF (medium density fiberboard, I bought a small panel at Home Depot).

The plywood parts are 9" by 4 1/2" and the MDF pieces are 40" by 6 1/4". The plywood pieces were cut on the ends with a band saw (the lines shown are 2 3/4" from the ends) to create a book spine profile-like shape.

The plywood pieces were glued and nailed to the MDF pieces 2" inches in from the ends.

Before putting this together I traced a plywood piece to make a pattern that is used in the next step.

Step 6: Book Spine Profile

A rectangle piece of foam board was cut and glued into the frame opening as shown, using some white glue and tape to hold it in place until it was dry.

With the pattern from the last step I traced and cut out several pieces of foam board to make little profile-defining fins.

These were hot glued along the edge of the case frame to create the book spine profile.

Step 7: Cover the Fins

The little profile fins were covered with strips of foam board. On the sides I cut and hot glued on individual strips and had to butt them together in various places.

For the top edge I realized I could cut just through one of the paper layers on a larger section of foam board and then bend the piece to create a flexible curved piece (photo 5). This is done with a large ruler and a sharp X-Acto blade.

This process was a lot quicker and was used to cover the top edge of the case's book spine edge.

Step 8: Cover With Craft Foam

The MDF parts of the case are 1/4" thick but the foam board parts are only 3/16".

I used some adhesive craft foam sheets to cover the foam board section. This both smooths everything out into a uniform shape, but also adds the exact amount of bulk so the spine edge is the same thickness as the MDF parts.

The adhesive foam didn't stick very well by itself so I sprayed the case with 3M Super 77 spray adhesive first, and then stuck on the sheets. That made them stick extremely well.

The craft sheets were trimmed and pieced together to cover the entire spine edge of the case, and then some masking tape was wrapped over the edges to make them clean and smooth.

Step 9: Add Faux Ribs

On a traditional bound book with sewn-in pages, there are often bulky stitches showing along the spine of the book under the cover.

I wanted to replicate this look so I hot glued on some pieces of nylon cord. These were then covered tightly with some wide masking tape to press their ends down firmly and hold them in place while I added the leather covering.

If I had done better research (or any at all), I'd have done this part differently. From what I've seen now, the ribs on the ends are too close to the top and bottom ends of the spine, and on a real stitched book there would not be visible stitching ribs in these spots. Whoopsie!

Step 10: Add Leather Covering

The leather covering was especially tricky because I had to butt multiple pieces together to cover the entire case. I was tempted to just buy a roll of faux leather or maybe some adhesive leatherette, which would have simplified this project immensely. But I was committed to using this leather so I went ahead with it.

I chose several large flat pieces of leather and trimmed them into squared-up shapes. I began by spraying the spine-edge side of the case with adhesive and the middle area of a large piece of leather. After a couple of minutes the glue is tacky and ready to place the two sides together.

Working from one end I stretched and rolled on the leather, and carefully pulled it into place onto the case. See photos 4 and 5. With the middle section glued down, I sprayed the loose edges and then stretched and pushed these in place as well, see photos 6 and 7.

Step 11: Continue Covering

For anywhere that I needed to butt the leather pieces together, I masked off everything except narrow strips along these edges to control where the adhesive was sprayed.

This way I could focus on getting the joint nice and tight, without fighting all the other sticky areas, and then come back and spray and affix the rest of the piece after the joint was done.

The photos outline this process better than words. Please review photos to see the process.

Step 12: More Covering

More masking and spraying and covering. See photos for the process.

This is the only way I could see to butt the sections together, and it required multiple steps for each section to make it all come together. But in the end it worked very well.

The tape had a tendency to pull up little flecks of the finish on the leather. To fix this I brushed on and buffed a little bit of brown shoe polish, which made these blemishes disappear.

The leather on the ends of the case were snipped in a few places and sprayed with glue and then folded over and pressed in place once section at a time. If I did this again I wouldn't snip these ends. The leather is stretchy enough that I think I could have worked it into position quickly enough without these snips.

However, snip I did, and it lead to some extra work of patching and fixing. Some of these snips created noticeable gaps on the inside of the book ends. So I glued in some scrap leather to fill in these gaps, and in a couple spots I actually used wood filler and paint to hide the gaps as well.

Afterword I wiped the whole leather-covered case with mink oil to give it some shine, except on the one panel on the spine where I planned to add the black title block.

Step 13: Make Head Bands

Head bands are a part of traditional book binding that I thought would make a fun little detail on my book shelf, even though most people will never see them.

I made these by wrapping a piece of nylon cord with alternating colors of embroidery thread. I started by putting 36" pieces of thread on some small upholstery needles. Each color was sewn through the cord and then wrapped over the loose tail end of thread to start, and then sewn through the cord again to end the section. The photos show this in better detail, please be sure to click through the photos.

After wrapping enough sections to make the band as long as I needed, the threads were sewn back through the cord and snipped off. The cord ends were trimmed and I used a lighter to gently heat up the ends to fuse them the nylon cord. For good measure I also added a drop of super glue to the end of each cord as well.

Step 14: Make Fake Pages

I spent several days trying to figure out the best way to make some fake pages for the ends of the book. I wanted them to look and feel real, and not seem silly or be a less-than perfect solution.

In then end I used real paper rather than any of the other options I had been considering.

I have this huge roll of banner paper I picked up at a yard sale, and this is what I used. On a cutting matt with a ruler and X-Acto knife, I cut out several 2" wide strips (the paper was doubled up, so each cut made two strips) and folded each one in half lengthwise.

When these are stacked with the folded edge facing out, they act like a spring and compress to fill in the gap between the book "cover" edges. I kept adding more until the pages looked how I wanted, which ended up being about 60 pages on each end of the case.

Each piece was trimmed to fit the depth needed between the spine edge and the front edge, and there's a little wiggle room because the spine-facing ends would be covered with the head band.

The prepped pages were removed from the book end, and then the first five or so were hot glued in place on both sides of the opening to fill in the curved parts where the book covers meet the spine. Then all the middle pages were added back into place, but with no glue at this point.

A thick bead of hot glue was laid down along the top spine-facing ends of the pages, and a head band was gently laid into this bead of glue.

For the other side of the pages I squirted hot glue along the hidden lower ends of the pages, and pressed a piece of tape along this edge before the glue had cooled. See photos 6 and 7.

Step 15: Title Block

I thought it would look great to have a black title block made of leather along the spine. This title block also covers up the seam where two sections of the leather cover butt together.

I cut a little piece of black leather to fit this section on the spine, and then traced where it would go with a fine-tipped pen.

Inside this traced area I used some 220 grit sandpaper to rough up the leather finish. I brushed on some contact cement into this area (since it seemed easier than masking and spraying), and sprayed the back of the black leather piece with spray adhesive. When both sides were tacky I pressed them together.

Step 16: Gold Details

Initially I was planning to buy some gold leaf and the special glue that goes with it, but then I realized there's a cheaper and easier way: gold washi tape.

It's not perfect but since this isn't ever going to be handled continuously, I think some little tape details should hold up just fine.

I laid down some pieces of tape on my mat and used a ruler and X-Acto to cut some little tiny strips. These were carefully pulled up from the mat and then gently placed onto the book spine. I originally put gold strips all around the black title block, but removed the side strips because I thought it looked too busy with them.

Step 17: Gold Letters

I printed out letters on some card stock and cut them out to make a simple stencil, and laid a few strips of the gold washi tape across the black leather title block.

The stencil letters were traced onto the gold tape using a fine-tipped marker, and then I very carefully cut around each letter with the X-Acto blade, and pulled off the scrap bits of tape.

The ink from the pen was gently daubed off of the letters with a Q-tip and a tiny bit of rubbing alcohol. The top of the T was a little too thin so I cut a tiny sliver of tape to add. It blends in pretty well and you can hardly tell.

It's done - all that's left is to put it in place and start using it!

Step 18: Afterthoughts

I had drilled a few holes along the back edges of the MDF before covering the case with leather, in case I ever felt the need to screw the book portion onto the supporting shelf beneath. The holes are counter sunk and can be felt through the leather, so I planned to cut a slit in the leather if needed to place some screws in these holes. But in the end I really don't think they are needed so I went without.

I completed both ends of the book with fake pages, so we had the option to have either end visible depending on if it looked better facing "up" or "down." (We went with "up.") Also if we ever want this in a different location where both ends are visible at the same time, I just wanted it to be done right.

Another thought I had was to distress everything to look old and beat up. You know, pretend antique. But on something like this that's already obviously fake (and a little goofy), I thought that would be overdoing it.

There are parts I wish I had done differently, and various mistakes made and fixed along the way. It's all part of the creative process though, and it turned out essentially how I had hoped.

Step 19: Get Reading!

This was a fun project and it even though it's a fake book, it sparked my interest in actual traditional book binding. I've got tons of paper and leather left over, so it's something I'll be exploring.

Thank you for reading to the end. I'd love to hear your thoughts!