DIY notebook cover

You got a couple of notebooks but you don't like their cover? Try out this DIY to make them look pretty and unique!

You'll need:

• a notebook
• white printing paper
• white acrylic paint
• paint brushes
• scrapbook paper in different patterns
• school glue or double-sided tape
• scissors
• washi tape
• a heavy book (if you use school glue instead of double-sided tape)

Start off by preparing your notebook - if the cover already has a colour that matches your scrapbook paper, you can leave it like that, otherwise paint your whole notebook with white acrylic paint or cover it entirely in white paper to create a nice and even base colour. Let it dry entirely if you used paint or glued the paper on with school glue. Also, whenever you glue something onto your notebook using school glue, it's best to let it dry while it's laying under a heavy book so that the cover won't roll up.

If you don't have scrapbook paper and print out your designs, always make sure that you give your notebook an even base colour first. Otherwise, the colours will shine through, especially if you're using a notebook like the one I used. Once the design is done you don't want the old cover to shine through!

For my design, I took white paper for my notebook's spine and two different scrapbook paper designs for the front and back cover. First, stick on the paper for the spine so that the other papers can overlap it later. Either use double-sided tape or school glue (which you can apply in a thin layer using an old paint brush). Then, stick on your scrapbook paper in a design you like. (If you want to create a straight line using different sheets of scrapbook paper, draw onto the notebook cover first, using a pencil.) Once everything dried, trim off the excess paper with your scissors.

For a notebook without a spiral spine, cut out a piece of book-wrapping foil that is slightly larger than your notebook's cover, back cover and spine in total. Wrap your notebook in foil and get rid of all air bubbles that might occur. Now, flip the foil over and stick it to the inside of your notebook. For a notebook with a spiral spine, you'll only need to stick the foil to the front cover, so cut out a piece of foil that roughly fits your front cover and stick the excess bits to the inside.

If you like, cover the part where the foil ends with washi tape for a nicer finish. And that's it!

I decided to stick a name tag on the yellow-chevron notebook by cutting out a rectangle from white paper and covering it with a slightly larger rectangular piece of foil. The overlapping parts of the foil are sticky enough to stick the label onto your notebook, and you can write whatever you'd like onto it with a transparency markers or even whiteboard markers - and you can wipe it off again by using a damp tissue.

My yellow-chevron notebook ended up being my new bullet journal. I'll make sure to make a blog post on bullet journal and what I included so far in the future. Stay tuned!

If you tried out this DIY, send me photos of your result using the hashtag #DIYwithKat - I'd love to see them!