Create a magical illusion of floating books with this floating shelf project

Floating shelves are all the rage because of the convenience and small footprint on your home. Most floating shelves can handle supporting your books, but they don’t create the illusion of a floating book. By cutting an old book and setting a floating shelf inside, you can make your books defy gravity.

A hardback book will be the most sturdy base for this project. The size of the book you choose should be based on the floating shelf base you choose. When deciding on a floating shelf base, look at the weight it can hold. To be sure of your choice, you can pick out the books you plan on placing on your shelf and weighing them. In no time, you will have a magically floating stack of books.

Materials
- An old book
- L-shaped floating wall shelf
- Marker
- Scissors
- Hot glue gun
- Hot glue sticks

Instructions
1. With your book’s spine toward you, open the front cover, and place your floating shelf on the first page. Trace around the shelf to mark where it will sit within your book.

2. Set your shelf aside, and flip your book around. Using a pair of heavy-duty scissors, cut along the outline you made a few pages at a time.

Tip: It will be better to go slowly during this process. Trying to cut more pages than your scissors can handle will result in a mangled mess of pages and possibly a broken pair of scissors.

3. Cut the outline through enough of the book to easily hold the shelf with the book closed, but not so much that it will be loose.

4. Once you have enough pages cut out, close the book. On the fore-edge, apply hot glue liberally on both sides of the cut-out for the shelf. Allow the glue to settle, and smooth over the pages to hold them together.

5. Allow the glue to dry then insert your shelf in the opening you made. Hang your floating shelf, and once you stack a few books on top, this fully functional shelf will seem to defy gravity.