Wednesday Extra: Handmade Notebooks by Jules

If you're anything like me when it comes to crafting, then you probably can't bear to throw anything away - but the question is, what do you do with all of those scraps of patterned paper? Well here's a great way to turn some of them into fabulous handmade notebooks!

You will need some pieces of patterned paper, plain or lined paper for the pages, either embroidery thread, ribbon or a Bind-It-All, and a few embellishments to decorate.

To make the smallest book you will need a piece of double sided paper which is long enough to be folded in half (mine was 4.5"x8.5"). Cut several sheets of plain (or lined) paper slightly smaller than your patterned piece. Mark the centre point on the plain paper and then make two more marks above and below the centre mark (the distance will depend on the size of your pages, my marks were 1" apart). Using a pokey tool (or similar) pierce holes through all of the plain pages where you have made your marks.

Take a needle and embroidery thread and sew down through the centre hole, then back up through the top hole, down through the bottom hole, and back up through the centre hole again. Tie the ends together as close to the paper as possible, making sure that you tie round the thread running from the top to bottom holes (this is to stop the knot pulling through the centre hole). Trim the threads and then fold the paper in half. Take your patterned piece, ink the edges and loosely fold in half. Add a line of glue down the crease and adhere the folded spine of your pages into the cover. Add embellishments to the cover and you're done!

For the larger square book the steps are very similar to those of the smaller book, but when you're piercing the three holes you need to go through the cover as well. As your binding will show on the outside of the book you can pretty it up with some ribbon instead of embroidery thread. 

Since the cover is included in the binding, there's no need to glue with this method, so all that's left is to embellish.

Finally, you can use smaller scraps of patterned paper to create a handmade notebook by using a Bind-It-All to finish the book. I used two pieces of the same paper to create my front and back covers, but you could use plain card for the back if you prefer. Another advantage to the Bind-It-All is that it doesn't matter if the inside pages are different sizes, so I was able to use the offcuts from the first two notebooks to make this one.

Use the Bind-It-All to punch holes down the side of each of your covers and the inside pages, and then bind with wires. A few embellishments on the front and you've got a really professional looking notebook!

I hope you're inspired to get crafting with your leftover scraps of patterned paper - if you have a go at any of these methods, link us up as we'd love to see!