My Ideal Bookshelf

One of my favorite gifts to give is original art. Not mine, of course. I love finding artists who create custom paintings. We have a couple of pieces in our living room that I had made for Greg, but I will share those another day. I want to talk about my current obsession, Ideal Bookshelf.

Who: Jane Mount

How It Works: You submit a list of your favorite books. Take photographs of the full spines. If you spot an edition you like better in one of the paintings on her site or blog, make a note. Then she transforms your list into a beautiful 8x10 painting!

I'm also excited that Jane is now offering single book paintings, which is a more affordable way to surprise someone with a custom painting of his or her favorite book.

You can also give gift cards so that the recipient can choose his or her own list.

This would be a really sweet wedding gift if you were to combine a few of each of their favorite books into a single painting.

The artist also offers a number of her paintings as affordable prints! Wouldn't this one look darling in the kitchen?

And in their recently released book, Jane Mount and Thessaly La Force bring to life the ideal bookshelves of many public figures, from Alice Waters to James Franco.

On the http://blog.idealbookshelf.com/, Jane and Thessaly encourage fans to submit their own ideal bookshelves. You can download the form to fill in with your favorite reads. Here is mine:

And here is one I made for Greg (Disclaimer: I picked these books, which means that Greg would likely exchange one or two of these for other titles before he submitted it for painting!)