Trees are well known to symbolize wisdom and family history. They are great symbols for the perpetuation of knowledge. Henceforth, only a book tree could aptly illustrate this year’s Educator Appreciation theme at the Pentecostals of Gainesville, “Thank you for helping us grow.”
Like the many educators that help grow a community, there were many books that were used to grow this tree. In fact, about 20 small mail bins of books were used. It was a labor of love that took three days, 8+ hours, ingenuity, hot glue, a lot of patience, and as many books as the Beast had in his library for Belle.
Most of the book trees I’ve seen have been in a Christmas tree shape, which I did not want. I wanted this book tree to resemble an actual tree. The foundation, however, is similar to a Christmas book tree in that for the first level of the foundation, a corner of the spine touched the adjacent book’s corner spine. As we built up, we laid books in between gaps so that it was as stable as possible. Since the foundation was wider than the top levels, we set aside small and thin books for the top level to achieve a narrower trunk. Each level was leveled to ensure a stable tree; fillers were used to achieve this (we used our Educator Appreciation event invites and even thin paper backs). These were put in between books to increase the height so that it was as leveled as possible.
In the middle of the top level, we stood up similar height books to resemble a middle branch (which we hot glued together). Then we hot glued similar width books for the remaining branches. There were five branches in total, lying upright and lying down. Also, we hot glued some pages together so when the books that made up the branches were suspended on the wall, the books wouldn’t open. Hot glue was also placed on the outer part of the pages to ensure the books wouldn’t open. Since it’s impossible to hot glue books to the wall, this is where the shelves were of particular use and added to the aesthetics. Succulents were placed in the shelves with little labels of educator positions we were celebrating. Since the shelves were white, we spray painted them blue and yellow to match the color scheme of the event. The books we used for the branches were heavy, but the sturdiness of the shelves helped with the stability of the tree.
Finally, the leaves were stabled around the perimeter first and then we filled in the empty spaces. We used at least 10 packs of leaves, which we luckily got on sale at Hobby Lobby. This project is not expensive if you have access to a lot of books. The shelves were also inexpensive on Amazon. The succulents were purchased at Home Depot. This project just takes a lot of time, but with proper planning, it shouldn’t be too arduous. Good tricks to save on time is putting aside similar width books for each level of the trunk and similar height books for the branches. What takes the most time is selecting the appropriate book to ensure levelness. If one level isn’t even then the final product will look lopsided so levelness is very important at every level of the tree.