The book serves as a tool to record historical events that transcend through the ages, passing down knowledge from generation to generation, spanning scientific studies to artistic fields. Today, it is more than just a recording tool, as creative artists start transforming them into genuine and remarkable art forms, generally named Book Sculptures.

(Image Source: Unfocused Mike)

Obsessed by the beauty in them and the effort it took to create these beautifully detailed sculptures, we want to take the chance to showcase to you 44 ingenious book sculptures, each carefully crafted by passionate sculptors. What you will see will not be cutouts from books, most of the sculptures are still in the book!

Meanwhile, if you have a passion for the paper art as well, we actually got them covered for you!

• Masters of Paper Art and Sculptures – Part II
• Masters of Paper Art and Sculptures
• 70 Beautiful Origami Paper Art

A Fun Time With Knowledge. This book sculpture features very detailed skeleton sculptures and old school music player, but what made this sculpture really special is the fact that nobody knows who created it – the artwork was delivered to a library or certain event secretly. (Image Source: chrisdonia)

Plant of Appreciation. Another secretly delivered book sculpture with aggressive details. Next to the tree sits a paper egg lined with gold and quoted parts from the poem “A Trace of Wings” by Edwin Morgan. (Image Source: chrisdonia)

Teabreak. A sculpture with beauty and elegance crafted in. It was found at the Edinburgh International Book Festival with the tag, reading “To @edbookfest ‘A gift’ This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas… & festivals. XX” Really mysterious, huh? (Image Source: chrisdonia)

Dairy Nets & Soda. You can’t deny that this sculpture is epic. Brian Dettmer takes a thick book and transformed it into an extremely impressive book sculpture, and what’s unbelievable is, he didn’t add anything extra to form the sculpture! (Image Source: Brian Dettmer)

Mound 2. By just removing what was there in the first place, a boring, abandoned book can even be turned into something fantastic and remarkable. Hat tip to the creator. (Image Source: Brian Dettmer)

Tab. Brian Dettmer is not only good at sculpting one book, as this sculpture composed by several books will prove to you. (Image Source: Brian Dettmer)

The Household Physicians. As the name of the book implies, all the colorful anatomy images came from the book itself – the sculptor just removed certain parts of the book to reveal the gems inside. Genius. (Image Source: Brian Dettmer)

Anthologia. Doubtless to say, Jacqueline Rush Lee’s book sculptures are one of the most unique in the industry, and a lot of hard work was put in to make them. For this one, it was hand-painted, sanded, inked, and completed with bookmarks and archival glue. (Image Source: Jacqueline Rush Lee)

Unfurled. Extremely eye-pleasing colors. The form is quite abstract, but you can feel like it’s a real creature that exists in our world! (Image Source: Jacqueline Rush Lee)

Flutter. Splendid colors, dynamic lines, great expression. Truly a genuine product of art. (Image Source: Jacqueline Rush Lee)

Lorem Ipsum II. What would you perceive this as? I never knew that the combination of books can form such a lively “creature”! (Image Source: Jacqueline Rush Lee)

Grand Larousse. Guy Laramee has his own passion on the art of book sculpting. His book sculptures consist mostly of landscapes, and this sculpture is just one of his greatest products of passion. (Image Source: Guy Laramee)

Longmen. Form an epic geographical existence with just 9 Longmen books, seriously? And this sculptor has just done that. (Image Source: Guy Laramee)

Book People. If you want to argue that life and spirit existed inside a book, this piece could be your most persuasive proof. (Image Source: Guy Laramee)

Petra. There’s a world for you to discover in every book. Literally. (Image Source: Guy Laramee)

What Have We Become? Vol. 1 Nicholas Galanin is good at turning a lifeless book into a face with rich emotions that are sometimes even more expressive than a human’s face. (Image Source: Nicholas Galanin)

Tlingit Vol.11. He’s silent, and he’s looking at you. For a second, you might believe that he’s alive. (Image Source: Nicholas Galanin)

Garden of Forking Paths. Many might have done the paper sculptures with these kinds of shapes, but few are as precise as Nicholas Jones’ book sculptures. (Image Source: Nicholas Jones)

Das Moderne Orchester. The right book and carefully crafted shapes, these are all you need to create an inspiring sculpture like the one showcased below. (Image Source: Nicholas Jones)

Rose. Can you count how many of the books are linked to create this unique book sculpture? Besides, you can also view similar sculptures with fewer books; just click on the same image here.(Image Source: Robert The)

Scorpion. I love the tail, simply because it’s awesome. (Image Source: Robert The)

Gideons Biblegun. The word of God is the sword of the Spirit, but apparently, it’s good as a gun, too. (Image Source: Robert The)

Bible Grenade. I think the best term to describe this sculpture is probably “creative”. (Image Source: Robert The)

Le Deuxième Sexe. Georgia Russell’s works, which are mostly placed into a jar, are often associated with carefully crafted books and leaf-like papercuts. A genuine blend, for sure. (Image Source: Georgia Russell)

Baudelaire. Watching this abstract and awe-inspiring sculpture, I just remembered that books were originally part of the nature. (Image Source: Georgia Russell)

The Baron in the Trees. This world built on a book seems more beautiful than the real world we live in. (Image Source: Su Blackwell)

The Orient Express. Every book has its own tale, and Su Blackwell is great at telling tales through this sculpture. (Image Source: Su Blackwell)

The Old House. Simple and gorgeous, doesn’t it just light up your life? (Image Source: Su Blackwell)

Holiday Tree. A similar pattern with most works in the industry, but with added lights and a star to form a Christmas tree! Now that’s called a creative twist. (Image Source: Kimbrough Library)

Folded Book. It challenged the usual sculpture patterns, and the outcome is strikingly cool. (Image Source: Kimbrough Library)

Recycled Art. You can’t deny the fact that this piece is really inspiring. (Image Source: Kimbrough Library)

The Ark. Book sculpture always look like it’s telling you a tale, so is this wonderful piece. (Image Source: n217cs)

Rocket Launcher. Smart use of paper to form a blasting wave below the rocket. Books can take you anywhere, if you embrace it. (Image Source: n217cs)

Typography. Typography is what makes a book appealing, and this well-executed sculpture reminds me of the fact. (Image Source: n217cs)

A Book Sculpture. A sculpture with comfortable shapes and modern colors applied. Nice try! (Image Source: Cara Smith)

Book of Shadows III. Seriously epic, and terrifying as well! Despite the details, I think I have any guts to put it in my room for a while, but it makes for a successful Halloween decoration, as intended by the creator. (Image Source: Nachthauch)

Book With Wings. There’s hardly a book sculpture that will influence the environment around it, but this is the exception. It looks holy and angelic – you go silent from looking at it. (Image Source: Unfocused Mike)

Train. Well executed – the sculpture, angle and lighting. This imaginative creation actually makes me feel like it’s really come out from the book! (Image Source: Becky Delaware)

Butterfly 2. Inspiring combination of books to form a unique sculpture, nice colors as well! (Image Source: Cara Barer)

Chapter 21. Flower blossoming from the book, what could be fresher than this! (Image Source: carrotskanfli)

The Words Fly Off the Pages. So much fiery love to this sculpture! The feathers are probably the critical factor that made this sculpture so beautiful and expressive. (Image Source: sneekyfox)

Live Garden Journal. This piece has the potential to become a very different sculpture form! It will be good to see more similar sculptures like this! (Image Source: cloutierj)

Pride and Prejudice. This sculpture resulted from an assignment, but it looks quite professional, if you ask me! Well done, Shamus. (Image Source: shamus)

Big Fish CU. What made this sculpture a jewel is the ripple effect behind the fish! An awesome idea that makes the entire sculpture come to life. (Image Source: striker313)

Reflection

By no way are these sculptures easily built, as making something creative from a something so plain is insanely hard. I mean the sculptor has to painstakingly add the details into every possible part of the sculpture. And yet, here we are looking at 44 inspiring and meticulously made sculptures. I have nothing but great admiration for their work.

There are definitely more creative juices flowing somewhere in some other stacks of books, therefore if you have found another impressive example, be sure to share it with us, and we won’t be able to thank you enough for the inspiration!

Related posts:

1. Masters of Paper Art and Paper Sculptures, Part II
2. 15 (Really) Beautiful & Creative Book Covers
3. 20 Beautiful Children’s Book Cover Illustrations
4. [Freebie] Book of Love Wallpaper

Creating borders is nothing new in HTML & CSS; we’ve been able to add borders since the beginning. You may have been familiar with solid borders, dotted borders, dashed borders and so on.

But, with the new CSS3 border-image property, creating borders on HTML element is becoming more advanced; well, simply put, we are now able to add a border using an image as the source which will allow us to add more attractive borders. All right, now let’s see how this property works:

Syntax and Browser Support

The border image in CSS3 is defined using the following shorthand syntax:

  border-image: [image source] [slice] [width] [outset] [repeat];

The syntax above is the official version from W3C that is only supported in Chrome, while Opera, Firefox, and Safari are still requiring the prefixed version (-o-, -moz-, -webkit-), and the Internet Explorer unsurprisingly does not support this property at all.

Furthermore, the [width] and the [outset] value in this border-image property are not yet supported in any browsers, however, the width value can be replaced using the border-width property.

So, in short, for now we can only apply the value of [image source], [slice] and [repeat] .

  border-image: [image source] [slice] [repeat];

Image Slice

Before we proceed to demonstrate this property, let’s talk about the “image slice” first as it is something new in declaring a property. The image slice here will define the cut of the image which respectively takes the starting point from the top, right, bottom, and left of the image edges that subsequently will also divide the image into nine sections, as illustrated with the following image.

In the image above, you will see that the sections 1, 3, 7 and 9 will become the corners of the border, and the sections 2, 4, 6 and 8 will become the border edge or line, making sure that the section where it will becomes the edge is repeatable or stretchable.

The value of the slices can be declared with a pixel unit or a percentage (%) unit for flexible measurement.

more references:

• CSS Backgrounds and Borders Level 3

Creating a Photo Frame

Now, let’s demonstrate the property in a real example.

This time, we are going implement the border-image property to create a photo frame and we will be using the image below as the source. We have carefully measured the image so it can be properly sliced, repeated and stretched regardless of the content width and the height.

Note: you can download the image above from this link.

Also, in this demonstration we will use this stunning Cinemagraph by From Me to You as the photo.

(Image source: From Me To You)

The markup

The markup is as simple as this:

  <div class="wrapper">  	<img src="path/photo.jpg">  </div>

Don’t forget to replace the path/photo.jpg with your own photo.

The styles

And then, let’s give it a frame using border-image.

If you look at the image above, our image width is 180px in total. This value can then be divided into 6 which each division being 30px; and so we will slice the image for 30px.

If you use length value for the slice, you should exclude the px unit, as it will automatically be translated to pixel, but if you decide to use percentage you will still need to add the (%).

As for the image repetition, we will use the default; repeat. Alternatively, you can use stretch and don’t worry, the border image will still look graceful.

  img {  	border-image:url("images/frame.png") 30 repeat;  	-o-border-image:url("images/frame.png") 30 repeat;  	-moz-border-image:url("images/frame.png") 30 repeat;  	-webkit-border-image:url("images/frame.png") 30 repeat;    	border-width: 30px;  }  

In addition, we also want to place the image at the center of the browser window as well as add a background texture to the document to make it more compelling.

  html {  	background: url('images/lightpaperfibers.png');  }  .wrapper {  	margin: 20px auto;  	height: 476px;  	width: 675px;  	text-align: center;  }  

All right, I think we are done here, now let’s view it in a browser.

• Demo
• Download Source

Do you feel like you are looking at a magical painting in Hogwarts?

Final thought

This border-image undoubtedly is a nice addition in the CSS3 family; we are no longer to be limited to the simple plain borders.

And in this post, we have showed you how we can create an image frame without worrying about the content or in this case the photo’s dimensions (width & height). The height and width can be flexible, as long as the border source is repeatable or stretchable.

Lastly, if you are still a bit puzzled about border-image, there is a tool you can use to help you create one more easily: border image tool

Related posts:

1. Beginner’s Guide to CSS3
2. Coding a Graceful Breadcrumb Navigation Menu in CSS3
3. Beginner’s Guide To: Building HTML5/CSS3 Webpages
4. Keeping Your CSS3 Code Markup Slim

When you need to send important information via an email to a person or client, all you can do is send an email and wait until the recipient has replied to know that they have received and opened the email you sent them. During times of urgency, this can be a source of distress for you.

With Microsoft Outlook, there is the ‘receipt’ function which allows your email recipient to send a notification telling you that they have read the email. But even this requires an action from them. If they choose to ignore it, you wouldn’t know if they have received and read the email.

There are many solutions for this but most will require you to send an HTML type email where a script will be placed in the email itself. But now with RighInbox, you can forget all that fancy HTML email settings, and still be notified when a person opens and reads your email. RightInbox is a Chrome browser extension for Gmail that will allow you to schedule the sending of an email, and now with the extra feature to track when your email is opened.

Recommended Reading: 18 Helpful Tools For Better Gmail Experience

Tracking An Email Read Status

It’s very easy to start with, all you need is the Chrome browser, and the RightInbox extension. Download and install.

After Installation is done, open your Gmail Inbox or refresh if it’s already opened. A notification will appear, click ‘Continue’ and then follow the instruction to allow it to access your Gmail.

Now to start tracking your next email, click on ‘Compose’ button in your Gmail Inbox.

In the compose area, you will see an additional ‘Track’ button appear in-line with your ‘Send Now’ button. To track this email, simply check the ‘Track’ button before you hit ‘Send Now’.

That is all you need to do, a simple ‘check’ will help you find out when the email is opened. There is no script required and RightInbox will track the delivery status even if your email content is just a simple plain-text.

Now when the email you sent is opened by the recipient, you will be notified via email with a little more details, that includes the IP and location.

Conclusion

The email tracking by RighInbox is made simple with Chrome browser, and there is no other script to be included in your email content. The notification is sent to you via an email, not via browser popup notification so you can always find out the status of your email even if you are away from your Chrome browser and your computer.

Related posts:

1. How to Check your Gmail Stats with Gmail Meter
2. Schedule (Send later) Your GMail Emails with Rightinbox
3. Setting Up POP3 Email With iPad [Quicktip]
4. 18 Helpful Tools for Better Gmail Experience