Can't get enough book decor in your home? Craft this faux bookshelf illusion filled with the vintage books and trinkets of your dreams. No real books will be harmed in the making of this bookshelf.

Supplies

1" thick styrofoam sheet
Box cutter or craft utility knife
Printed book spines, or illustrate your own (I paid less than $5 for this printable pdf by artzology on Etsy, and the effort saved was worth every penny)
Empty frame
Thick board or canvas that can be cut to the size of your frame (I used this tri-fold posterboard; note that this option will have two faint fold lines on your final product, but mine were easy to cover)
Adhesives: packing tape, hot glue, and tacky glue recommended
Optional: 1/8" x 1" wood strips for faux shelves
Optional: Trinkets such as thrifted frames, ornaments, sheet music, or fake plants
Optional: Air dry clay to craft extras such as plant vases or candlestick holders

Step 1: Cut Posterboard to Size

Using a craft knife or box cutter, cut your poster board or foam board to fit snugly inside your frame. If using a tri-fold posterboard, you may want to use packing tape on the backside to secure the board in an open and flat position.

My frame was roughly 3 feet x 4 feet, so a foam poster board was the right balance between sturdy and lightweight for this size frame.

Step 2: Secure Foam Board to Frame

Use hot glue to secure the foam board into the backside of the frame. Be sure to line the entire perimeter with hot glue. Although tedious, this extra effort will prevent any gaps from appearing between the frame and the poster board.

If using a tri-fold posterboard, be sure that the tape holding the board open is facing the backside of the frame.

If you don't want your faux bookshelf to be permanently attached to your frame, you could install hinges similar to a traditional picture frame.

At this point, install or replace any hanging hardware if necessary; the frame will need to start being handled more carefully as you start adding books.

Step 3: Assemble Styrofoam Books

Unless you're up for a challenge, you don't need to construct every book as an individual unit. Instead, you can create whole sets of books at once that will look just as good.

In the pdf I purchased, 4-5 spines side by side are printed on each page. Cut out these spines with scissors, then cut out an identically sized rectangle of styrofoam using your craft knife or box cutter. Adhere the spines to the styrofoam using tacky glue and let dry completely. I've found that tacky glue works much better than Elmer's glue, hot glue, or superglue, but you must let it dry completely before handling.

At this point you have a block of styrofoam with one "right side" and blank edges. Unless you plan to cover the blank edge of the book with a trinket, you probably want a decorated book cover on this edge. Rather than design new covers, I used a copy of the book's spine. You can see how this effect looks in the last photo and decide whether you want to design new covers.

Continue making blocks of books in this way. If you'd like, also create 2-3 single books instead of book blocks so you can stack a few or place them at tilted angles for a more realistic effect.

Step 4: Optional: Add Book Pages

If your frame will be hung above eye level, the bottom edge of styrofoam on each book block will be visible to anyone looking underneath. You could leave the blocks as-is or paint them, but an even cooler option is to fill them with folded paper so they really look like pages peeking out.

To do this, cut a 1/2" x 1/2" x book width rectangle into the bottom of each book slot.

Accordion fold a 1/2" x 2 foot strip of paper to a depth of 1/2". At this point you should have long accordions of paper. You can glue several accordions together to make the pages appear denser or to fill a "thicker" book. The fourth photo's pages are a bit sparse, so I doubled up the amount of paper in the fifth photo.

Use tacky glue to attach the accordions to the indents you cut in the styrofoam. This is a labor intensive step, so don't forget that you only need to do it for book edges that will be in people's sight lines. You also may want to paint the styrofoam that's still exposed on the bottom. Here, I used a black Sharpie to fill in the color.

Step 5: Optional: Create Shelves

My frame was huge, so I wanted to fill it with three layers of fake shelving. To do this, I laser cut two 1/8" x 1" x 3 foot strips of wood along with three shelf supports each. A laser cutter is definitely overkill unless you want ornately shaped shelf supports like I did; a sawed strip of wood or another piece of foam board will do just fine here. My cut file is included here for reference.

Optionally paint each shelf to look like wood, then use hot glue to attach each shelf perpendicular to the foam board.

shelves.svg
Download

Step 6: Add Books and Trinkets

It's finally the fun part -- start arranging and attaching your books to the foam board! I used a combination of hot glue and tacky glue on each book block, then pressed it to the foam board for 10 seconds. Press gently so as not to dent your book spines.

Some of my favorite extras were found at the thrift store, including:

A mini lamp ornament
A small clock
Taper candles
An ornate mini frame
Fake pothos

I also made some extras such as:

Rolled up scrapbooking paper tied with ribbon to look like sheet music
Strips of printed paper clothespined to twine
A laser cut mini shelf for rocks

MakerCase (en.makercase.com) is a great resource for generating laser cut files for boxes of a specific size. I used this site for my mini rock display shelf.

Step 7: Optional: Create Clay Trinket Holders

If any of your thrifted finds need more support, such as a vase for fake flowers or a candlestick, you can cheaply make some from air-dry or polymer clay. There are many great Instructables for air-dry clay, including Emma_Blaisdell13's, so I won't reinvent the wheel; once your clay has fully dried, decorate with acrylic paint and hot glue to your foam board.

I would avoid gluing on any air dry clay pieces larger than 3x3", as these may be too heavy for the board and fall off.

Step 8: Hang

When hanging, try to keep the frame perpendicular to the floor at all times so that gravity doesn't encourage any glued-on pieces to fall off. Get a friend to help if your frame is larger than 2'x2'.

Enjoy your guests' reactions and reassure them that no books were harmed in the making of this frame!