DIY Fancy Notebooks!

Fancy notebook from sweet-wrappers and a burnt scarf :-)

Take sweetie box of your preferred shape and size (I used a Sour Patch), something that has a firm, non-flimsy cover. Then cut out each wide side (or each curved side; or each side which you wish to make into a notebook cover). Then put each wide side on a piece of cardboard and cut them out.





Now place each wide side, the rough cardboard side up, on a piece of silk (cut from a burnt scarf). The piece should be at least an inch larger than the dimensions of the cardboard. Punch as many holes as you feel necessary on each (I used two). Liberally apply glue on the rough cardboard side, and carefully fold the silk on it so that the silk forms a nicely snug cover for the sweet-wrapper.





Now cut out another piece of paper (from any magazine or an old notebook--any slightly firm paper would do) and paste it on the inside of the silk folds. I did it rather sloppily, but this is a necessary step because:
A. it hides the scruffy, gummy silk pastings from the eye.
B. it provides an even surface for writing (try writing without using this piece of paper--each page of the notebook will tear along the silk-pasting lines).
C. it makes sure the silk-pastings won't come off. It holds them in place.





Finally, take a bunch of unused sheets from old notebooks of various sizes, and cut them to size. Often, one large sheet can yield as many as four smaller sheets for a notebook this size. Punch holdes along the lines of the original holes punched on the covers. Now, loop binder-rings (mine cost 15c each) through these matching punched holes in the cover and the newly-cut notepapers. And voila!, your fancy, silk-covered notebook is made.

Exception:
On occasion that you do not have a burned or faded or unused piece of cloth handy, feel free to use pretty pictures from magazines for the cover. This is a larger notebook I made with the picture of a jellyfish from the Atlantic (which has maginificent pictures, btw).