Plaid Notebook

This was just a quick project for my hubby, who wanted a little notebook to keep in the car to jot down reminders. I happened to have a few mini comp books that I picked up at Dollar Tree (I believe they came in a package of 4) but even though he would have been happy to take one as is, I wanted to make it a little nicer. Fortunately, when I looked through my paper stash I found this great patterned paper that looked like four different plaid papers bound together with a leather cord. I immediately knew I had to use this paper to cover hubby's notebook, with the leather binding centered so that it looked like it bound the notebook itself. This project took less than 1/2 of the 12x12 sheet, so I have enough paper to cover one more notebook in the future and scraps left over to decorate cards!

Above you can see how I went about covering the notebook. First, I cut my patterned paper to size and "dry" fitted it around the notebook, lightly creasing it so that I would have a good idea of where everything needed to go once the adhesive was in place. It may not be obvious from the picture, but for this notebook the paper is slightly longer than needed because I wanted to wrap it into the inside of the covers.

Once the dry fitting was done, I used a piece of sticky strip on the spine to attach a piece of chocolate chip ribbon to serve as a bookmark. I then added more sticky strip over the ribbon and along the entire length of the notebook spine, as well as in the corners of the front and back covers of the notebook. What is not show in the photos is that I covered the remaining edges of the front and back covers with 3M double sided tape to make sure none of the edges of the paper I was using to cover up the covers would stick up or get snagged on something.

With all the adhesives in place and the red tape peeled off the sticky strip, I attached the paper to the notebook. In this step you have to be very careful that everything is lined up exactly right - the sticky strip is very unforgiving and does not let you move the paper around once it's down.

I stamped five different images form the Six Sided Sampler set in Memento Tuxedo Black ink on very vanilla card stock and pinched them out with the hexagon punch. I lined the backs of two of those images with sticky strip and attached them back to back to each other over the chocolate chip ribbon to form the bookmark tab. I attached the other three punched hexagon pieces to the front of the notebook for a bit of non-fussy decoration and to give hubby a space to label the notebook if he wants. In the next photos I show the front and back of the notebook as well as the two sides of the bookmark.

I really like how this notebook cover turned out, and especially how realistic that leather cord binding looks. It adds so much to the project! I also love how the plaids in the hexagons continue the whole plaid theme. Since this project meets the criteria for last Wednesday's Simon Says Stamp Wednesday blog challenge (Simon Says: Use Plaid) by featuring both plaid patterned paper and stamps, I will happily submit it there.

Recipe:

Paper: very vanilla, Patchwork Plaid patterned paper from Colorbook
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black
Stamps: Six Sided Sampler
Accessories: Hexagon Punch, Chocolate Chip Ribbon