{"id":14622,"date":"2014-12-12T08:00:06","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T13:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=14622"},"modified":"2014-12-12T08:00:06","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T13:00:06","slug":"elfing-the-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=14622","title":{"rendered":"Elfing the Store: Making a Book Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite things to do after a busy day at the store is to lock up when everyone leaves and then get busy ‘elf’-ing the store. It’s fun to use those quiet hours to create or rearrange displays (or even whole sections of the store if I’m feeling really ambitious), tidy and straighten, making the store look festive and fresh. All of us at the store tackle different projects; booksellers PJ, Darrilyn, and Sandy often take on the windows and spiff up the front Flying Pig table. The other day, they set up staff pick books with add-on gifts: the cookbooks\u00a0Prune<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and Twelve Recipes<\/em><\/a> with little packet of page markers<\/a> and recipe editor pads<\/a>; The Day the Crayons Quit<\/em><\/a> with a set of natural beeswax crayons; Skippyjon Jones Snow What<\/a><\/em> with a little Skippyjon doll<\/a>; Elizabeth Partridge’s John Lennon: All I Want Is the Truth<\/em><\/a>\u00a0paired with a Beatles Yellow Submarine mug<\/a>, and so on. It looks great and is already drawing customers’ notice. Their creativity inspired me to surprise them with a display of my own: a tree of books.
\nLast week, a photo of such a tree went viral on Facebook — at least among book lovers — and a friend texted me the picture and suggested we create this for the store. \u00a0Here it is:
\n

\"book<\/a>

(I don’t have the photo source; if you know it, please alert me so I can credit properly.)<\/p><\/div>
\nAfter work, I set about making a tree of our own. We have a cart of half-price hardcovers, so I pulled a bunch of those and arranged them by size and thickness. Starting with the biggest books, I built up, using smaller and smaller books as the tree grew. (It’s a little tree for our little store.) I had to cheat a little at the top, using mini books not from our cart to make the top-most layers. As I built up, I added battery-powered strings of lights that a friend had given us, and added little bows. The very top was formed by Maisy’s Christmas Tree<\/a>, which had the advantage not only of being cute and a little sparkly, but being a solid board book that can stand up on its own.
\nHere’s how it came out:
\n

\"IMG_2831\"<\/a>

The tree without lights on.<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Book<\/a>

Little red lights all aglow.<\/p><\/div>
\n

\"Book<\/a>

With the store lights out, atmospheric tree.<\/p><\/div>
\nMaybe it’s a little lopsided, and maybe it isn’t very tall, but it was so much fun to make, and boy, does it look cute when you come into the store!
\nWhat shall I elf next? Got any bookish crafts for us to try?
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Building a tree of books at the store.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}