'Necessity is the mother of all invention'

Ok, so this clearly isn't an "invention", but I do find that I often set out to make something because I can't find what I am looking for at a reasonable price. For instance, I needed to find two small journals for a friend of mine. After looking high and low and being unhappy with my options, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I found two functional spirals that were about the size I was looking for, but as you can see....not cute.

I thought about covering them and leaving the spiral portion exposed, but that quickly went out the window because it didn't look nice. So I separated the spirals and set out to make a template out of plain (read: cheap) paper.

Before cutting into my more expensive paper, I wanted to make sure that I was going to be able to adequately cover the green with the tools I had in my arsenal. My pattern worked, so I went ahead with picking out my paper. I also chose brown linen book binding tape to personalize the journals.

I traced my pattern onto the back of the decorative paper, cut it out, and punched the holes. If you are going to do something similar, try to use as many factory edges of the paper as possible. This will ensure the pattern is square. To personalize the journals, I sketched out block letters, again, on plain paper, and made sure they were the proportion I wanted.

Next, I traced the letters, transposed, onto the backing of the book binding and cut them out.

Finally, I centered and attached the book binding letters to the decorative paper, then lined up and attached the decorative paper to the original spiral notebook cover with adhesive.

I am pleased with how they turned out. Now they are functional AND cute.