Shelves are a great way to decorate rooms for your next build! They can be used as a bookcase, spruce up a bedroom, or simply add visual flair to a room. They also serve a practical purpose in that they are needed to improve your enchantment! So we'll show you exactly how to create a library in this step-by-step tutorial.
How to make a shelf
To make a shelf in Minecraft we are going to need boards and books. While the plank part is easy, the book part can be a bit more challenging! We'll walk you through all of this step by step below.
Step 1: cut wood
Go ahead and chop or cut trees to get wood logs! You will need at least two newspapers to create enough boards for the bookcase.
Step 2: create boards
Stick logs of any type into your inventory crafting area or a crafting table to create planks! You get four planks for each log.
Step 3: Get Paper Ingredients
The paper is a little trickier because we're going to need some candy cane. It spawns near water, so you might have to go looking for it a bit. Here is an example of what it looks like:
When you find some, be sure to knock it down because it will completely break and you can collect it faster. I recommend planting some of this near water at your base, as it grows relatively quickly and you will always have a supply of it available!
Step 4: Create Paper
Once you have candy cane, you can craft paper scraps. You will need three canes for each piece of paper. We need three books to make a shelf, so that's at least nine rods! Here is the paper recipe:
You can also find Paper in Chests, which can be found in Shipwrecks, Strongholds, and Villages. Obviously, this won't be a steady supply, so it's always best to create an area to plant the candy cane!
Step 5: find leather
Leather isn't too hard to find, but you'll need to locate certain animals to get it. You will need to find cows, mooshrooms, horses, donkeys, mules, llamas or hoglines. When you kill one, you have a chance to get 0-2 leather per animal. If you find yourself rabbits, you can turn four rabbit skins into one leather.
If you can find cows, I recommend starting a farm by fencing and raising them. You can then kill some for the leather you need. If you have a weapon enchanted with plunder, the amount of leather increases with each level! We need at least three pieces of leather to craft all three books for a single shelf.
Step 6: create the books
Now that we have paper and leather, we can put them together! Since there are only four ingredients, you can do this in your inventory or a crafting table. Here are the recipes to create a book:
We need three books in total to create the single shelf!
Step 7: Create the Library
Take your six wooden planks and put three at the top and bottom of your crafting table. Place your three books across in the middle and you'll have a bookshelf!
find shelves
If you're having trouble locating leather, you can get a shelf by going to a village and picking up houses there. Yes, it's a bit of theft, but I hope they don't miss them! You can also find them in the grand mansions in the woods that appear randomly on the map. If you head to a stronghold, where you'll find the final portal, you can find rooms that contain a ton of shelves!
