10 Easy-To-Make Bookends

A full bookshelf isn’t just a great way to learn it’s great home decor too. Books bring class to any room. Your books can do more than to add a little dignity to your home, though. Books need bookends objects that can be quirky and fun. Here are several easy-to-make bookends ideas to try out.

1. A sporting theme: baseball bookends

If you have a baseball lover in the family, child or adult, they’ll appreciate a baseball bookend.

The idea with a baseball bookend is to screw two 4″ x 4″ pieces of plywood together at right angles, polish them until they shine and then use glue to fix a baseball to the center. Since such a bookend will likely be too light to hold many books, you should visit a home improvement store or stationery store to buy sticky rubber feet to attach to the underside.

2. Concrete bookends

If you believe that bookends should be heavy enough to hold their ground, concrete is a great material to try. Most DIYers don’t touch concrete they see it as a difficult and messy material. Home improvement stores, though, sell easy-to-use concrete kits.

You simply need to buy one (an 8 lb. bag usually costs less than $4), mix in water and find a mold to pour it into. A typical plastic refrigerator storage container will work. Coat the insides with vegetable oil, pour the concrete in and pop it out a few hours later.

3. The pyrite bookend

If you remember your chemistry from school, pyrite is a golden colored mineral. It can make a pretty raw material for any number of projects. While it can be hard for you to find it around your house, you can certainly spray paint a pile of small common rocks golden to look like pyrite.

Once you have a bunch of them, you only need to fashion them into little hillocks, glue them together with a glue gun and put them into service as fun bookends.

4. The garden décor bookend

Garden décor statues hollow foot-high animals or gnomes can make for excellent bookends. Get a couple of these statues, fill them up with river rocks (you get them at any home improvement store), seal the bottom off with cardboard and spray paint the entire statue in an attractive color. Your bookends are ready to hold your books up.

5. The action figure bookend

While you could certainly glue an action figure to a piece of plywood for a bookend that works the same way as the baseball idea above, you could try a more interesting approach. Get a large action figure, cut it in half at the waist and glue the top half to a bookshelf with epoxy. Your superhero will now use his powers to prop up your books.

6. The wrap-a-brick bookend

If you have a few bricks left over from a past home improvement project, you can easily repurpose them into charming little bookends that you can rely on to stay put and hold your books in place. You simply need to find attractive material to wrap each brick in scrapbook paper, vinyl or anything else that looks good should work.

7. The repurposed corbel

Home improvement stores sell all kinds of corbels ornamental ceiling moldings that offer structural support. Depending on the material, you’ll need to pay anything from $10 to $40 for a piece.

Since corbels are designed to go up between ceilings and walls, they have two flat sides. To make a bookend, you simply need to turn a corbel upside down.

8. The rope cube

Rope cubes are exceedingly simple to make. Grab a cardboard box, fill it with sand or rocks and then wrap twine around it. Use a glue gun to stick the ends in place and spray paint the whole thing.

9. The acrylic animal

Make two cardboard cutouts in the shape of an animal, say an elephant or a giraffe, and spray paint them gold. Use acrylic cement to glue them together. Once your acrylic animals are ready, pick up two acrylic stamping blocks, glue them together at right angles to make an L, put an animal in place on each block and glue it so that it stands firm.

10. The live bookend

Succulents the cute little plants that have stubby, thick and juicy foliage can be perfectly endearing wherever you may put them around the house. They are extremely hardy and can get by on just a little care. With the potting soil that each potted succulent has, these are heavy enough to function as bookends.