There's something about the book nook format which appeals to me very strongly. It's not huge, and it puts this little window into some completely different place. It takes up bookshelf space, which is bad, but what better location thematically to that kind of escape into a different world?
I actually completed this one a while back, but only now got around to taking pictures and writing about it. This one is a sort of astrologer's study. A brass and mahogany telescope looks out into the wheeling stars through a round window whose complex frame provides critical points of reference. Stacks of books sit on a nearby table. The parquet floor is real wood (Popsicle sticks, glued in place and stained). The telescope is mostly wood (a couple of thin dowels) with a bit of paint and brass wire. The side walls are a 3d printed Moroccan pattern with mirror behind them, while the back wall is wood (actually veneer glued on a base).
The table is 3d printed, but the books are actual paper and leather. The thinner ones are purchase miniatures, but the covers of the larger ones are real leather, cut to size, dampened, and forced into molds, then stained and painted. The signatures are paper folded into accordions, then trimmed.
Something I've started experimenting with is adding motion to a nook. It's not just a static tableau; there's something going on. (You may need to embiggen this in YouTube to see what's going on.)
How does that work? It's cheap and easy. The mechanism behind it all is a battery powered clock movement. I 3d-printed a couple of thin but wide rings with a bar across the center and a hole in the middle. Each bar was glued to a hand of the clock with the center hole aligned with the axis of rotation. The hour and minute rings had strips of colored light filter glued to them, while the second ring had a piece of black construction paper glued to it, pierced with a lot of pinholes. The movement was mounted to the back of the nook, with the post for the hands sticking through a hole in the center. The inside back of the nook was covered with a USB-powered LED string, then the various hands were installed. When the whole thing is running, then, the rotating face of the seconds layer lets through a shifting pattern of light while the more slowly rotating minute and hour layers mean that the colors will slowly shift over time, though you'd have to pay attention to notice.
