Gift Ideas for Book Lovers: Bookends

Original, customized bookends make a nice gift for the reader on your list. You can find some ready made custom designs at Just Book Ends and Etsy, but with a little imagination and a few supplies you could make bookends from objects found at hobby and craft stores, the attic, the junk drawer, and don’t forget the garage!

Here’s a short brainstorm for recycling and re-purposing items for bookends:

• Cool colorful vintage license plates can be bent into L shapes and screwed or glued to blocks of wood to make them heavier and more rigid.
• Baby cowboy boots (or any shoes) filled with sand, pebbles, or plaster of Paris to give them weight.
• Weighted duck decoys. You can drill holes up through the bottom and fill them with round weights found at hobby and fishing tackle stores. Seal the holes with wood glue.
• Small flower pots or vases filled with resin and containing colorful artificial flowers.
• Buy some of the cheap, small metal L shaped bookends, the kind that slide under books. Glue the upright part of the bookend to the inside cover of a lovely (but not valuable) hardback book. Choose  old time classic bound books for older kids, or colorful children’s books for younger kids.
• If your child is willing to give up some Legos, build a permanent cube from Legos using  glue. (Gorilla glue is said to work.) Before you finish and seal the top, fill it with something heavy such as small pebbles from the craft store (or the driveway!)

If you need a jump start to come up with some ideas, check out the bookends pinned in Pinterest