Emma Taylor, 24, started on the path of book sculpting seven years ago when she crafted a piece for an extra-curriculum project when she was in Sixth-form.
Book sculpting takes incredible skill and patience with each sculpture taking around a month to complete.
Watch the amazing art of book sculpting in the video below.
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Video credit: Rumble
Miss Taylor said: “I love the idea of using the paper to make the story come visually out of the book, rather than just using your imagination.
“All my sculptures have to be in some way linked to the book I put them in.”
Once complete, a sculpture can be sold for anywhere between £400($515) and £600($770).
She said: “I often scour charity shops, antique shops, and markets to find the right books.
“I’m really fussy when choosing.
“All the books have to be hardback to provide sturdiness, and I don’t like it when the pages are new and white.
“I like the books to have a bit of character – to be a bit discolored and the pages to have been folded.
“I love it when they’ve got inscriptions in them too.”
“I’d never use the first edition or collectible though.”
But identifying the perfect base book is only one part of the challenge.
“I’m also super fussy choosing the books where I get the pages from.
“I always have a second book where the pages are usually falling out to use to create the sculptures.
“But I’d say that I take longer to choose the pages book than the hardback books.
“I’m really fussy about the kind of pages because I don’t like them to be too think or too thin.
“And I like pages with that plastic feel, and they’ve also got to be able to absorb the glue well too.”
Taylor details how she goes about the process of creating these incredible sculptures.
Taylor, from Ely, Cambridgeshire, said: “I always start with research and pictures and sketches.
“For example with the swan one, I went down and took pictures of how they look and move, and then from there, I did sketches.
“Once I’ve got the structure I want I’ll use either wire or cardboard to get the base frame.
“I tend to use wire for animals and cardboard for buildings.
“Then once I’ve done that I layer strips of pages over until I’ve done all the detail.”
She loves the challenge the art brings, once even spending four hours to create an intricately detailed lace shawl measuring a mere 15 square centimeters.
The shawl was a part of a sculpture for Miss Havisham, out of a scene from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
She said: “That piece ended up becoming one my favorites in the end, but at the time it really tested my patience.
“It was also mildly annoying because, in the end, you couldn’t really see the lace shawl all that much.
“It was definitely a labor of love.”
And the labor continues with another project.
She said: “I’m working on two projects at the moment, one is two elephants walking across on a safari, and the other is of an oak tree with lots of wild mushrooms around it.”
But her work is not limited to her sculptures as she’s currently renovating a narrow-boat where she will be both living and working from.
She said: “I’ve done everything myself except the electrics.
“I’ve even learned to tile and do plumbing.”
Taylor’s first creation was in school roughly seven years ago.
She said: “My very first sculpture took about two months to create because I was working full time doing a-levels.”
“I got my inspiration after I saw a project in Edinburgh which was trying to protest against closing libraries.”
She has been so engrossed with the process of her craft that she can’t even count how many sculptures she’s made so far.
She said: “I honestly couldn’t tell you exactly how many I’ve made but I know it’s definitely over 50.”
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