I often browse around the endless world wide web for ideas and inspiration for new DIYs and when I came across the adorable GrowingBooksI was mesmerized, never had I seen an idea like this! Sadly the small company is located all the way on the other side of the globe, in Terrigal Australia, the option of purchasing an original one was impossible. So I figured out to try it on my own, and it turned out pretty cute or what do you think?
I need to confess it straight up: this is not the easiest DIY to do. It looks simple enough but don’t be fooled! It takes a lot of patience, time and you shouldn’t waste a minute on it without the right tools. After some research, I found out the actual GrowingBooks company who came up with the idea uses professional drills to achieve a clean outcome and even waterproofs the books. The idea itself is very simple. Get some cool looking old books, stack them in a pile, glue or tie them together firmly and make a hole that is big enough for a small plant. Plant the green and enjoy your awesome new book plant pot!
For anyone living outside Australia here’s simple instructions on how to make a growing book yourself. First thing is to find the books you wish to use. Old, rustic, falling-apart kind is the best. I also love the idea of giving a new life to old books. Unfortunately, all my books at home were way too new, shiny and definitely too good to destroy, so I headed out to check what’s in the open-bookcase (Offener Buecherschrank) near my house. The open-bookcase is a charity project in Vienna in which bookcases are spread across the city offering passers-by the chance to browse and pick up a book when they wish. The idea is to replace the book you take with one of your own and return the one you took after reading. And I happened to find three perfectly aged books which even matched in color, and replaced them with some of my old ones.
When you have your books picked out you place them in a pile. Then you either use glue to stick the books together or a robe, which I opted for. Draw the outlines of the pot on the cover using the plant you will use and start digging! As it happens to be I don’t own any mechanical drills I had to figure out how to make this happen. I ended up using the strongest carpet knife I found, and a regular paper knife for the pages inside. It’s very hard to make a clean finish but don’t worry about it. It will be cover with the plant in the end anyways. It took me a good few hours to finish the hole but I managed in the end. But let me tell you, this will definitely be the last growing book I do. Keep in mind the size of the hole you need, and don’t use plants which need excessive watering. I chose to use a cute little cactus I’ve had for a few years. The whole process is quite messy but totally worth it as in the end you’re a owner of a cute, one-of-a-kind Growing Book! 🙂
