Notebooks for the Teenager in you.

Hello!

After a year delay in my Educational career. I am happy to say that I start taking college courses again starting tomorrow. I took a semester off to plan my wedding, then my husband changed jobs twice in the last year, so going to school was pretty much out of the question. We have now settled down (for the time being) , and Indiana University is only 10 minutes away from our

humble abode.

The point is this: I went to Target to buy school supplies. I bought my favorite pencils, and these new pens that I hope to show you later this week, or maybe the following week, because I am unsure of how demanding school work is going to be on my time. In my quest for school supplies I notice that cute notebooks were outrageously prices. 2 dollars for a "cheap" one and sometimes 5-6 dollars for an expensive one.

When school started in september I could not pass up the 10 notebooks for a dollar bin at Target, even though I was not yet planning to go back to school. Who can pass up such a deal? Well certainly not me. If it's a deal I simply cannot talk my self out of it on the slim chance that I might need it sometime in the near future. I was right, as my instincts normally are. I hardly ever discard my clearance finds because if I do not need them I am pretty crafty and can make something out of it that I do need or that I can give to a friend.

To end this suddenly long story, I was unwilling to pay high prices for a cute notebook, so I came home bound to make my own and make them cuter than the ones I saw. I also created one for my best friend Jen. She currently is enrolled in college courses too, and every college (and high school) student can always use a notebook.

I started this out like a science experiment. I took out scrapbook paper that I had bought for another craft project a while back and hadn't used very much of it. I cut it to fit the front of the notebook and took Elmer's glue and drizzles it on. This made the paper pucker, and I was not happy. Then I tried a glue stick. This did fine in making it smooth on the notebook cover and letting it lay flat. After it dried however I noticed that it was already starting to peel off. With the wear and tear that is bound to happen in my shoulder bag that I carry my books and such in, there was no way the cover was going to survive. I then noticed that I had double sided tape. This did the trick. I will let you know a month into my classes how well it holds up.

So I taped the back of the edges of the scrapbook paper (I wish I had taken pictures). I then stuck in on to the cover. I went about decorating it in different ways. If you are a scrapbooker this should be easy for you because you just follow your craftiness genes and it will come out great!

I will post the ones I did to give you idea to get you started. Also after I did this I looked up online similar projects and a lot of them say to sand paper the edges down as a way of helping the two layers (the cover and the scrapbook paper) kind of fuse together and not start to peel around the edges. I did this as well. I hope it helps with the wear and tear. Remember to sand edges in a downward motion not in an upward or side to side motion or you will cause the paper to peel.

I know this was long, much longer than I expected it to be. I hope you found it helpful. I think I might be getting too old to carry around a cute notebook, this might be more for ages 5-18 but I can't seem to be happy with just a plain notebook, and I don't know if I ever will be! This is an easy craft you can do with your kids. After the first one, it only took me 5 minutes tops to do each of the other notebooks.