Non-Traditional Christmas Tree #19, 2023

A Literary Tree - 2023 -
# 19 in the Non-Traditional Christmas Tree

This year, my non-traditional Christmas tree was made from old Italian books. I started this project while in Italy, and continued it in California as well.

I had seen the idea in a home decorating magazine, and thus set out to find books that could easily be used for the project. This meant that I needed to find older books that had what are called signatures. Signatures are small booklets (of sorts) that are joined together to create a bigger book.

So, I spent time looking through Used Book stores for the right kind of books and easily found some.

The first batch I brought home were beautiful books unto themselves and my friends told me I could NOT destroy these. (never mind the fact that I couldn't really read them, as they were in Italian).

Basically, the process is simple:

1. Separate the inside of the book from its cover
2. Separate the signatures from the inside (which involves an X-acto knife)
3. Start folding... each page the same.

Folding Process

                                                                        Work Station

I had grand plans of creating a tree that stacked one tree above that other, but that didn't happen, so here you can see my 'forest' of trees, which I set up with a few lights.

Merry Christmas 2023