happy crafternoon // DIY notebook.

I have my mums sewing machine out at the moment for some uni work, so I was thinking of something fun I could quickly create as a bit of a break. Whilst on Pinterest I had the idea of making a little note book. Here is what you'll need:

• a piece of card cut to the overall size you want the notebook to be. I had a blank card lying around so I just used that since it was already folded nicely for me.
• paper to create pages. This can be any type of paper and any size, so long as it is larger or the same size as the piece of card. I used 4 A3 sheets of white 80 gsm copy paper.
• pencil
• scissors 
• cotton the colour you want the binding stitching (you will see this from the outside so make a pretty choice). I went for a bright orange.
• any supplies you need to decorate the cover (I just used a 0.4 sharpie)

The first step is to cut the paper for the pages to the same size as the piece of card. I just lay the card itself over the paper and traced around it with a pencil. At this stage I made a lovely discovery that the piece of card I was using fit exactly 4 times on the piece of paper. This made this step very easy for me.

(sorry for the white on white making things a little tricky to see)

Once all the pages were cut to size it was time to sew them together. For this I used a machine, put if you don't have access to a machine I'm sure with some patience you could sew by hand, you would just have to take great care to go in a straight line. I went quite slowly to make sure I kept to a very straight line even with a machine. Since I was using a pre-folded card I just used the fold line as a guide as to where to sew. (note the sewing machine, my mum got that for her 21st birthday from her parents and it's still kicking on!)

Once it is all stitched down the middle just fold it along that line (again having a pre-folded card made this a lot easier). It should look something like this:

(see how my fingers are holding it down? It will keep wanting to spring open for a bit so I recommend putting something heavy on top for it for a bit to help the fold settle down.)

Now comes the creative part! You have a plain little notebook now so go crazy with your creativity! You may have already used a decorative or coloured piece of card which would mean you're done now (or just want a plain notebook). If you are struggling here are some ideas for designs I've pinned here and here or even here. As you can see I have used one of the ideas from the first link.

So there you have it, a handmade little notebook. Now I'm thinking about all the size variations I could make and all the different designs for the cover...