My son, Ike, just turned 16 the other day, and I wanted to do something special for his birthday.
My 11-year-old daughter, Rose, is great at brainstorming gift ideas. Knowing how much he loves Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive, she suggested we get him the RPG. I was willing to spend the money, but I couldn’t find a version that shipped internationally. That sparked a different idea: a homemade gift tied to his all-time favorite book, the first in the series, The Way of Kings—also my absolute favorite, hands down. I knew he appreciates homemade presents from how much he loved his Harry Potter gift, including a DIY Hogwarts acceptance letter he still has 5 years later. This wasn’t his only present; I also bought him some swag from Dragonsteel, Sanderson’s publishing company.
The Way of Kings is so beloved in our home that copies have literally been loved to death, and we’ve had to replace them. I didn’t want to toss a worn copy, so I decided to upcycle it. When I started planning Ike’s birthday, a picture frame made from the book’s pages felt perfect.
I built the frame from a cardboard box, using a photo from our trip to Georgia—specifically the Mtirala Rainforest. I glued the photo onto a piece of cardboard, then glued that onto the back of the frame to keep everything sturdy.
I rolled pages from the book and glued the rolls together with a glue stick, then attached them to the cardboard frame. In a few spots the glue stick didn’t hold, so I reinforced those areas with superglue. I also found out Ike’s favorite part of the book and used pages mostly from that section, so every glance at the frame would bring those scenes to mind.
There was one area my daughter helped with where the angle of the rolled pages left a small gap. She designed a cover using one of the book’s glyphs—Bridge Four, a major symbol in the story—by drawing it on several pages glued together for sturdiness, then attaching it over the gap.
I added a few illustrations from the book as well, including an image of a Voidbringer and the chapter symbol used for the main character.
Since the story features gemstones in spheres that hold magical light (stormlight—hence The Stormlight Archive), we glued on a few colored marbles that catch the light and seem to glow.
When I sat down to make the gift, the book had split in half, and the page in front of me opened with a line about making a gift to his son. It felt so apt, since I was making this gift for my own son. I placed that passage beneath the photo and arranged the rolled pages around it.
In the book, only women are allowed to read and write in what is known as “Women’s Script.” I found a key with a one-to-one translation to the English alphabet, wrote a message to my son in that script on a page from the book (glued to additional pages for thickness), and then glued it across the bottom of the frame.
There is a lot of swordfighting in this book, so we looked up how to make an origami sword and made one out of pages of the book and glued it onto the frame as well.
For a birthday card I found a page of the book that had a drawing on one side and was blank on the other, and turned that into a card by folding it in half.
I asked ChatGPT to help me come up with a good birthday wish having to do with the series and I then tweaked it to make it mine, and wrote it inside the card.
It was a bit complicated to wrap it up, because we needed to make sure not to squish the rolled paper, but we managed to do it, and surprised him with it, and he was very happy and loved it. (And if he is just pretending to like it because he’s a good kid, as I mentioned, this isn’t his only present.)
“How did you make it?
It’s currently hanging in his room next to his other pictures.
Total cost for a meaningful personalized one of a kind birthday gift? Basically free other than a dollar or two for the super glue and glue sticks.
Just wanted to share.
Do you ever make homemade gifts? What types of gifts do you make? Have you made anything from broken books before?
