Built and reviewed by: John A. MacInnes – Build number 68.
Introduction
There are few things more naturally suited to the book nook concept than, well, a bookshop. So when Cutebee sent us its Bookshop Memories kit, it immediately seemed like a fairly safe bet that this one would feel right at home on a bookshelf.
The kit arrives in a nicely presented box, with the full colour slip case giving us a good preview of what is hidden inside. And this isn’t a modern, minimalist bookshop either. Bookshop Memories goes firmly down the vintage route, with dark woodwork, ornate decorative panels, tall bookshelves, a beautifully detailed interior and a large arched window that gives the finished model considerably more character than its modest dimensions might suggest.
Turn the box around and there is rather more information to digest. The model stands approximately 17cm high, 11.5cm wide and 10cm deep, making it a relatively compact book nook. The packaging identifies it as part of Cutebee’s Book Journey range, alongside three other designs in the same series.
The kit itself contains 137 pieces and is rated by Cutebee as a one-star difficulty build, with an advertised assembly time of around two hours. It includes the wooden components, paper accessories, battery box, wiring and LED lighting, with two AAA batteries required for operation. The upgraded version also includes a protective dust cover, while the front doors can be opened to reveal the finished interior.
The lighting is operated by a touch switch, another feature that has become increasingly common on Cutebee’s more recent kits. The company describes the design as a vintage reading space intended to combine historical, cultural and fantastical elements, and the photographs on the packaging certainly suggest that there is considerably more going on inside than the rather understated exterior initially reveals.
A little about Cutebee
Cutebee has become one of the more recognisable names in the miniature and book nook market, offering a large and continually expanding range of DIY book nooks, miniature houses and related kits. Its current catalogue includes dozens of book nook designs, covering everything from traditional bookshops and libraries to fantasy, mystery and street-scene themes.
The company describes its philosophy rather nicely: “We want every piece of work, not just a fine commodity. It is a place to put dreams and love.” Whether the finished kits always live up to that ambition is, of course, something we will leave to our build experience to decide.
And that brings us neatly to the important bit.
The photographs on the box make some fairly bold promises about what awaits inside, but a pretty picture on packaging is one thing. How well those 137 pieces actually go together, how good the printed elements are, whether the tiny details live up to expectations, and whether that touch-operated lighting behaves itself are quite another.
So, with the box photographed and the contents ready to escape, it was time to find out whether Bookshop Memories really does create a little piece of literary magic — or whether we would simply end up with 137 pieces of carefully cut plywood wondering what went wrong.
There are 137 pieces in the kit, while the finished Bookshop Memories measures approximately 11.5cm wide by 10cm deep and 17cm high. That makes this a relatively compact build, with a small footprint that should make it easy to find a home on a bookshelf while its height and detailed façade still give it plenty of presence when displayed.
Recommended for builders aged 14 and over, The kit sits comfortably in the beginner category arena.
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Unboxing:
With the box opened and the contents spread across the workbench, Bookshop Memories turns out to be a fairly straightforward collection of components, without the overwhelming pile of parts that can sometimes greet you when tackling a more ambitious miniature.
The main construction comes on five full-size MDF panels, with the pieces neatly laser-cut and ready to be removed as the build progresses. Alongside the MDF are several clear PVC inserts for the windows, which should help give the finished bookshop a little more depth once the lighting is switched on.
There are also the usual assortment of smaller materials and accessories needed to complete the scene, together with the instruction manual and sticker sheet. Among the more unusual items is a small metal-looking fitting that, unless my eyes are deceiving me, bears a remarkable resemblance to one of those little stud buttons you find on a pair of denim jeans. Quite what Cutebee had in mind for it will become apparent as the build progresses, but it certainly isn’t something I expected to find lurking in a bookshop kit.
Thankfully, this isn’t one of those builds where you open the box to discover several dozen tiny sheets of paper that will eventually become miniature books. There are books and bookshop details here, naturally, but Cutebee has mixed things up with a broader selection of decorative and scene-setting components, which should make the assembly a little more varied.
The lighting components are also included in the box, although I’ll leave those for a much closer examination later in the review. At this stage, everything appears to be reasonably well packaged and organised, and there is certainly enough variety in the contents to suggest that the finished model should be considerably more interesting than the relatively modest pile of materials sitting in front of me.
As always, though, the real test isn’t what is in the box. It’s what happens when all those pieces have to start fitting together.
Instruction Manual:
The instruction manual is a little different from some of the more substantial book nook manuals we have seen. This one is essentially a fold-out A5 sheet, printed in colour and running to 11 pages. Despite its rather compact format, it manages to cover the build process without making things unnecessarily complicated.
The instructions follow a sensible sequence, taking you through the various preparation stages before you eventually get to P6, where you finally get to put your hands on the actual building itself. From there, the construction progresses in a fairly logical fashion, with each stage clearly illustrated and the parts required for the next step easy enough to identify.
There isn’t really anything here that should cause problems, even if this is your first venture into the book nook hobby. The diagrams are clear, the amount of information on each page is manageable and there are no great leaps of faith where you find yourself staring at the instructions wondering what on earth they expect you to do next. In fact, this is probably one of those manuals where a complete beginner could pick it up and get started without too much head-scratching, which is exactly what you want from a kit aimed at this end of the hobby.
The kit as Supplied:
First impressions of the actual components are rather good. The five MDF panels have a clean, well-finished appearance, and the laser cutting is generally sharp and precise. The pieces are clearly defined on the boards, with little evidence of excessive scorching around the cuts, which is always a welcome sight. There is nothing immediately apparent that suggests these are going to require hours of sanding and fettling before they can even be considered for assembly.
The printed elements are also nicely done. There is plenty of colour and texture across the various pieces, and Cutebee has made good use of the printing to add detail that would otherwise have required considerably more work from the builder. The wood-effect sections in particular have a convincing appearance, while some of the decorative pieces have enough printed detail to make them look considerably more complicated than the flat sheets of MDF they actually are.
The clear PVC window inserts are another nice touch. They are neatly cut and should allow the lighting to work through the windows without the slightly cloudy appearance you sometimes get with cheaper plastic components. Whether they remain quite as clean once I’ve managed to get glue, fingerprints and whatever else I inevitably manage to smear across them is another matter, of course.
The smaller components are where the character of the kit starts to become more obvious. There is a good mixture of decorative pieces rather than simply relying on printed graphics to do all the work, and the inclusion of the fabric elements adds a little welcome variety to what would otherwise be a predominantly MDF construction.
Overall, there isn’t anything in the supplied components that raises an immediate red flag. The cutting is clean, the printing is good and the materials appear to be of a reasonable standard for a kit at this price point. Of course, looking at beautifully cut pieces sitting neatly on a sheet is the easy part. The real test will be whether they remain quite so impressive once they’ve been popped out, assembled and persuaded to behave themselves.
This isn’t a kit that’s going to blow your mind with rotating turntables, sound boards, moving staircases or any of the other mechanical tricks that some of the more elaborate book nooks now like to throw at you. Bookshop Memories keeps things deliberately simple, using a basic mortise-and-tenon, click-fit construction that should make the actual assembly a fairly painless affair. For someone new to the hobby, that could be a very good thing; for anyone who has already worked their way through several kits, it may just prove to be a little too easy.
Lighting Kit:
And, as if to prove my point about the simplicity of this kit, the lighting system consists of a single battery box taking two AAA batteries, which aren’t supplied, one LED bead head and a touch-capacitive sensor. That’s it. No PCB, no collection of connectors and wires spreading themselves across the workbench and certainly nothing here that is going to require an engineering degree.
At this stage, I don’t yet know exactly where that solitary LED is going to be positioned, so I’m not going to judge the lighting too harshly just yet. Once I reach the point in the build where it becomes apparent where Cutebee expects it to live, I’ll be able to see whether it provides sufficient illumination for the interior or whether there is scope — or indeed any real need — to add a little supplementary lighting of my own. I am now looking at that gothic window thinking that it might be an ideal location for an LED filament bulb. The issue at this stage is there’s no oil sheet so I am thinking it’s a solid panel.
For now, though, this is about as uncomplicated as book nook lighting gets. Two batteries, one LED and a touch sensor. Even I should be able to manage that without calling in an electrician.
There is one small point worth mentioning before we leave the lighting system behind. The two soldered connections on the touch sensor are left completely exposed, and these are not the sort of connections I would want rattling around inside a finished book nook. They are small and, more importantly, rather fragile, so a little too much enthusiasm when handling the sensor could see one of them breaking away.
So, here’s my tip for you. Get the hot glue gun warmed up and put a small blob of glue over both solder joints, making sure the connections are completely covered. Leave it to cool and set, and you’ve effectively given those delicate connections a little bit of mechanical protection. It’s a simple job that takes seconds, but it could save you from the considerably less enjoyable task of trying to re-solder a broken connection later in the build.
Consider it cheap insurance — and considerably less painful than discovering you’ve just broken your lighting system after everything else has been glued into place.
The Build:
Before getting anywhere near the first piece of MDF, I always like to test the lighting. Yes, even when the entire lighting system consists of one LED. There is nothing quite as disappointing as spending several hours assembling a kit, carefully hiding wires, gluing everything into place and finally reaching the big reveal, only to touch the sensor and be greeted by the technical equivalent of absolute silence. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. At that point, taking the whole thing apart again to find the fault is nobody’s idea of fun.
So, before construction begins, connect the battery box, pop in the two AAA batteries and give the system a quick test. The good news is that there is no need to worry about colour-coding the lamps or trying to work out which tiny plug is supposed to go where. There is only one LED to connect, so the wiring challenge is pretty much impossible to get wrong. The touch sensor also responded as it should, giving me a reassuring little glow before I started building.
It’s a simple test, but it’s one worth doing. Five minutes spent checking the electronics now could save considerably more than five minutes of swearing later.
Before we get anywhere near putting up the first wall of the bookshop, there is, as usual, a fair bit of preparation to get through. The opening stages concentrate on the interior furniture and accessories, so you’re soon building bookcases, tables, chairs and shelving before the actual shop itself gets much of a look-in.
And, of course, because this is a bookshop, there are books. Lots of them. Thankfully, they aren’t quite as terrifying as the miniature-book marathon some kits subject you to, but there are still enough of them to remind you that somebody, somewhere, decided a tiny bookshop wasn’t complete without making the builder assemble its tiny library one book at a time.
It’s actually a sensible way to start the build. By the time the main structure begins to take shape, you’ll already have a collection of furniture and accessories ready to go inside it, rather than having to stop halfway through construction to build an entire room’s worth of contents. It also gives you a chance to get into the rhythm of the kit before the larger structural pieces start appearing on the workbench.
Once the furniture and accessories are out of the way, the actual construction gets underway in a very straightforward fashion. One of the walls gets its shelving fitted first, before the attention turns to the floor. A few of those pre-built pieces can then be added to the interior, so by page six you already have the beginnings of something resembling an actual building, with a wall and floor ready to be joined together.
From there, the build moves around the structure in a logical order. The rear wall gets its shelving and the rather ornate window frame, which takes the form of a gothic-style arch and adds a nice bit of character to what would otherwise be a fairly plain wall. The right-hand wall follows, bringing the main structure together a little further.
Next comes the roof section, which incorporates the PVC dust protector along with the single, rather lonely LED that makes up the entire lighting system. Once that’s in place, it’s on to the front of the shop, where the doors are fitted and the build finally reaches its conclusion.
Having worked through the instructions from beginning to end, I’m not seeing anything here that causes me any concern. The sequence is logical, the construction looks straightforward and there don’t appear to be any particularly fiddly or technically demanding stages hiding in the later pages. For anyone who has built a few book nooks already, this should be a very gentle stroll through the assembly process; for a newcomer, it looks like a particularly forgiving introduction to the hobby.
The First Section:
With the lighting checked and the manual laid out beside me, it was time to get started. The first few stages are pleasantly straightforward, with the smaller components being removed from the boards and assembled into the pieces that will eventually populate the shop.
This is where my approach to these kits differs slightly from the instructions. I could simply pop the parts out, give them a quick once-over and start gluing, but where’s the fun in that? Every single piece is going to get the full treatment. I’m a fiend for sanding, I hate tab remnants and burrs, so nothing gets a free pass. Out comes the sanding stick, followed by a marker pen to colour those exposed MDF edges, and only then is the piece ready to move on to the next stage. If Cutebee thought 137 pieces meant 137 quick clicks and a blob of glue, they clearly haven’t met me yet.
The nice thing about these early stages is that you can see progress almost immediately. Rather than spending ages working on a component that will eventually disappear inside the structure, you’re creating recognisable little pieces that will become part of the finished bookshop. And, as usual, the workbench soon begins to resemble the aftermath of a miniature furniture delivery, with bits and pieces accumulating while the actual building remains conspicuously absent.
And then there is the small matter of colour. You would think that having a collection of more than 250 pens within arm’s reach would make choosing a suitable shade straightforward. It doesn’t. Ten minutes later, I’m still holding various shades of brown up against the piece, trying to decide whether one is just slightly more appropriate than another, despite the fact that anyone standing more than one foot away probably wouldn’t know the difference.
Of course, once I’ve decided on the colour, that’s another job added to the list. What should have been a quick bit of assembly has now become sanding, edge colouring, drying time, second coat on the edge painting and finally assembly, and suddenly the supposedly simple first stages are eating up considerably more time than Cutebee probably had in mind. It’s becoming a familiar pattern: the kit says “two hours”, while I quietly turn that into something that would allow other builders to squeeze in a vacation.
Books:
Anyone who has followed my previous book nook builds will know just how much I enjoy making miniature books. And by “enjoy”, I mean I would rather undertake almost any other job available. The stickers either refuse to stick, end up at an angle that would make a drunken signwriter proud, or, having finally managed to get one on straight, I inevitably decide it needs moving. At which point it tears, refuses to stick again and generally turns a tiny book into a test of my patience.
So, I did what any right-thinking nook builder does, didn’t I? Yes, straight onto Temu we go in search of ready-made miniature books. I will issue a small warning here, though: finding ones small enough can be a bit of a struggle. The ones I found were noticeably larger than the blank books supplied with the kit, but that’s not really a problem. These are made from a soft foam material, so they can easily be trimmed down to size with a sharp knife or even a pair of scissors. A little careful cutting and they fit the bill rather nicely, while saving me from the annual ritual of wrestling with tiny book stickers.
Tip Number One:
Steps 18 and 19, spread across pages 6 and 7, have you building the two shelving units that will eventually sit against the rear wall. Step 19 is the one worth paying a little more attention to, as the two side uprights are different lengths. Once assembled, the bookcase fits onto part C1, the rear wall, and when you look down onto the wall, the Step 19 bookcase belongs on the right-hand side.
This is where I managed to convince myself that I had done something wrong. The tenon on the left-hand upright means the bookcase doesn’t sit completely flush against the rear wall, leaving a noticeable gap behind it. Cue me checking the manual, checking the parts, checking the manual again and wondering which bit I had managed to get wrong. It turns out, of course, that I hadn’t. The gap is supposed to be there.
The reason becomes clear a couple of steps later. That little space is designed to provide a channel for the touch sensor and LED wiring, allowing the cables to run neatly behind the bookcase and up the rear wall rather than being left on display. So, if you reach this stage and find yourself staring at that gap wondering what you’ve done wrong, don’t panic. Carry on to Step 21 and all becomes clear. In the meantime, you can save yourself the head-scratching I went through. The gap was supposed to be there all along.
My Thoughts:
Bookshop Memories is, without any doubt, a beginner’s kit. There is no getting away from that, but I certainly wouldn’t let that put you off if you’ve already built a few book nooks. Not every kit needs to throw a mechanical staircase, rotating display or a small electrical substation at you to make it enjoyable, and there is something quite refreshing about a build that simply lets you get on with it.
My build took around six hours from start to finish, although that needs a little qualification. A fair chunk of that time was spent doing things that Cutebee clearly didn’t factor into its estimated build time, namely my rather obsessive sanding of every component and colouring of all those exposed MDF edges. If you are happy to pop the pieces out, give them a quick clean-up and get on with the assembly, I would comfortably expect this to be a gentle four-hour build.
The instruction manual deserves credit too. It is well laid out, the sequence makes sense and the illustrations are clear and unambiguous. There are no great leaps of faith required and, with the exception of my brief period of confusion over that deliberately positioned gap behind the rear bookcase, I never found myself wondering what I was supposed to be doing next. For a beginner, that’s exactly what you want.
And what about that single lamp? Did it need an extra one? No, it did not. The finished Bookshop Memories is a compact little model, measuring approximately 11.5cm wide, 10cm deep and 17cm high, so there really isn’t a huge interior to illuminate. That solitary warm-white LED does the job perfectly well, creating a cosy glow without turning the place into a miniature branch of Blackpool Illuminations. In fact, adding more lighting would probably be overkill and could easily destroy the warm, intimate atmosphere the single lamp creates.
The two front doors were nicely cut and fitted together perfectly. I would recommend using a couple of small rubber-tipped clamps to hold the acetate window sheets in place while the glue dries, but apart from that, there really wasn’t much to worry about.
These doors couldn’t have been easier to fit. Sometimes, you know, there’s just no need to reinvent the wheel when it’s completely unnecessary. They are held in place by four U-shaped pieces which fitted the mortises perfectly, and there they swung very happily. The kit even provides two ornate door handles and a mechanism to keep the doors closed. All in all, a great job on such a nice kit.
So yes, this is a simple kit. But simple doesn’t necessarily mean disappointing. Bookshop Memories does exactly what it sets out to do, and for anyone looking for an enjoyable, relatively quick build that doesn’t require a degree in miniature engineering, it could be just the ticket. Even more experienced nookers might find it makes a rather pleasant change from being knee-deep in wires, PCBs and instructions that appear to have been written by somebody who has never actually built the kit.
Pros
- Excellent choice for beginners or anyone wanting a relaxing, uncomplicated build.
- Cleanly cut MDF with good-fitting mortise-and-tenon joints.
- Clear, well-illustrated and easy-to-follow instruction manual.
- Good quality printed detail on the decorative components.
- PVC window inserts add a nice finishing touch.
- Warm-white LED creates a cosy atmosphere without overcomplicating the lighting.
- Touch sensor keeps the operation simple.
- Compact finished size makes it easy to find a home on a bookshelf.
- Very little in the build to cause frustration or require specialist skills.
Cons
- Perhaps too simple for experienced builders looking for a challenge.
- The exposed solder joints on the touch sensor are fragile and would benefit from being protected with hot glue.
- Only one LED is supplied, although in this case I don’t consider that a genuine shortcoming.
- The supplied miniature books are likely to test the patience of anyone who dislikes assembling tiny books.
- The compact size means there isn’t a huge amount of interior space for additional customisation.
- AAA batteries are required but are not included.
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