Folded book trees

You may have seen my post a few days ago with my book carved snowman... well it was all part of a table centerpiece idea I had for a party I had yesterday.  To go with the snowman, I made four folded book trees.  (I won't go into details - if you want to make one just google it, or search for them on Pinterest).  They were a huge hit at the party, I think I may be making a few for gifts next year:

 I cut out a couple of kraft paper stars with my Cricut, added a little distress glitter and glued them on top of the trees.

 I made two large, two small and put one of them up on a small pedestal to vary the height a little.  They looked great in the center when I put out all the food around them.

A Book Carved Snowman

Here is a little project that I saw on Pinterest, and decided to make up a couple to give as gifts.  If you Google "book carving" you'll get all kinds of amazing results, and plenty of how-to's.  Scroll down to see how I made it:

 I started by tracing 3 half circles on the cover of a Harlequin!!  Once you get started cutting with an Xacto, it goes quite quickly.  Mine is good and sharp, so it would cut about 10 pages at a time.

 After carving, I fanned him out to break the spine, and make sure that the pages would sit evenly.

 I decided to use two books, and glue the covers together, as I wanted him to be really full (each book is around 185 pages, so a single book around 300-400 pages would work, too.

 I couldn't find a pre-made top hat in the stores, so I bought a square of black felt, die cut a large and small circle, and cut a strip - all of which I glued together to make his hat.  I raided my yard to snip some tiny twigs to use for his arms which I hot glued between the pages.  I cut a thin strip of plaid fabric that I wrapped around his neck as a scarf - and that was it!