Pretty Covered Notebooks

So, another really quick and easy DIY for you, how to take a notebook that looks like this:

And turn it into something more like this:

1. Find some nice coloured/patterned paper (I got mine from Tiger, I think Beth has already mentioned it, probably our favourite shop ever!)

2. Draw round your notebook and cut out about 5mm bigger all round except at the spine (this depends on the thickness of your spine, if it is very thin, you will just need to cut a triangle shape out, I had to cut quite a bit out as my front and back covers were stuck down about 5mm from the top). Also, cut the corners like so:

3. Glue the paper to the cover of the notebook, making sure to line it up where you have marked the paper and folding it carefully around the spine

4. Fold over the edges and glue down 

If you have cut your corners as I showed above, you shouldn't have the gaps like there are on this one, this was my first and I made a few mistakes! It should look more like this:

5. At this point I left mine under some heavy books whilst they dried to make sure everything stayed in the right place but if you had better glue / more glueable notebooks (mine had shiny covers so they didn't stick brilliantly) you could probably skip this bit.

6. Find some coordinating/complementing paper for the inside, measure and cut 2 pieces about 5mm smaller than the inside cover of your notebook. Stick them inside.

I haven't got a photo of the inside of these ones for some reason but here's the inside of one I made for a stocking present at Christmas to illustrate:

And you're done : ) You can add a title to the front if you want, I used a rectangle of white paper stuck on a slightly larger rectangle of the same paper as the inside.

Also, for one of my notebooks, the paper wasn't long enough to go all the way around if I kept the pattern the right way up so in case you have the same problem, work out how far your paper does go round, cut another piece to cover the remained, making sure it is from the right part of the pattern, carefully match up the pattern, overlapping the paper a little bit and glue in place.

Barely noticeable!

So there you go, you never need to buy expensive pretty notebooks again!