Notebooks

I guess we've neglected to say Happy New Year to everyone.  So, I hope you're all having a great 2012 so far!  I feel like we're a lot further into the year already, so it's always a surprise when I see the date.  And I don't feel bad for not having accomplished more already.  I don't need to get a month's worth of stuff done in 12 days!
Anyway, on to the project. These are some notebooks I made in December. I thought they turned out very nicely, if I do say so myself, and thought they'd be fun on the blog. :-)

I've always thought it would be fun to make a notebook, but somehow overwhelming to think about. But my friend sent me a link to a handmade one a few months ago and after a while I finally decided to try it out. I had all these notebooks that I bought for piano lessons, but can't use because after a couple of weeks, the pages start falling out. -- if you buy 5 cent notebooks at Walmart, be sure they're spiral bound. It makes all the difference -- We had planned to donate them, but hadn't gotten to it yet when I decided they'd be perfect. I could just cut them down to the size I wanted. So I got out our trusty paper cutter and went to work. In case you're wondering what great paper cutter I had that would cut all that paper together, I don't. I'm not sure, but it might be older than me and won't do more than a few pieces at a time. But it works.  I added decorative scrapbooking paper, which is what really makes these fun. I just cut a bunch to the right size and randomly stuck them into the notebook paper. I'm not good with random, but I worked hard at it. :-)

The covers I made out of cardboard. It was hard to get the holes into the cardboard with the hole punch, but with help, they all got punched.  I covered them with scrapbook paper and stickers on some of them.  Some of them I thought looked nice just plain.  I joined it all together with scrapbook rings and there you have a notebook. :-) 

 I wanted to make a cover for them.  The cover is actually how all this got started.  I was looking through a magazine and found these cute book covers, but I wanted these for a gift and I didn't know what book to cover and give, so eventually I came up with the notebooks.  I ended up using some wide eyelet (my brilliant mother's idea), I folded it over and right sides together, I sewed up the bottom and two sides.  I sewed a button to one side and a loop of ribbon to the other and there's a very nice cover.  Very simple.