Custom Notebooks DIY

These little custom notebooks are handy and perfect gift for anyone like your husband, friends, mom,sister,brother.Believe me !!They will surely thank you for your little handmade gift.It will helpful for your mother to write her grocery list or a list of phone numbers(Even though she has a smartphone ,She will refer to her notebook) or for yourself to take to library for quick notes or your hubby to note important points at the meeting.You can make these notebooks at whatever size you want with the simple supplies at home.Let us start to make the notebooks.

Materials required:
Cereal box for the cover
Bunch of papers you want to use (I used A4 printer paper)
Needle
Thread
Awl or any pointy object to make holes
Xacto knife or any knife to trim the paper to your required size

Optional Materials For customization :
Markers
Colour papers
Glue stick
Gold foil or aluminium foil

Step 1:
Cut a part (Front or back) from the cereal box and trim the edges according to the required size.If you want want to add customization do it at this point.(Discussed later in this post).Take a bunch of papers(I took 20 sheets) trim to fit the size of the cereal cover.Fold each sheets into half separately and then stack them one above the other.

Step 2:

Mark five holes with the Awl or any pointy object ,2 holes (one at the top ,one at bottom) 1cm from the edges.Other 3 holes at the equal distance from the previous 2 holes.Make the holes in one paper and with that as a guide mark the holes in the rest of the paper and the cover.While making holes work with the set of 4 or five papers at one time to make things easy and also you will get clean hole in all the papers.

Step 3:

Thread the needle.(I used 3 strands of embroidery thread).Start at the middle point from the inside of the notebook leaving some thread to knot it at the end.Stitch along the holes as shown in the stitch diagram.I have marked the holes as A,B,C,D & E.Stitches as 1,2,3, so that it will be easy to follow.When you reach the middle point ,secure with the knot at the outside of the notebook and pull the knot by passing the needle through the same middle hole and secure a knot inside with the thread which we left at the beginning and trim the excess. Hurrayyyyy!!!You are done!!!

Start as shown in the left side and follow the stitch diagram in the right.

Finished look of the stitches.

Customization :

There are various ways to customize this notebooks.I will show some of the ways which I used.

1)As I decided to gift these notebooks for Valentine's day I decided to go with the Hearts theme.But you can totally customize it according to the occasion or your favorites(If you are doing this for yourself).I cut out some hearts and glued gold sheet (I saved this sheet which came with a snack bag inside :) ) to the back side.You can use gold foil or aluminium foil if you want silver colour.(shown below)

2)You can cover the cereal box cover with the colour paper and customize it.Do this before piercing the holes .If you don't want the stitches to show out you can glue a strip of paper and cover it(as shown in the pink notebook).If you going to present it to guys, go with some manly things like his favourite games ,mustache , shirt & tie(Blue Notebook), etc.

3)In this Notebook ,I just used markers to add some interesting emoticons and mustache .And I also added a pocket to the back cover of the notebook to keep any bits of paper like bills,some cards,etc.To add that take a strip of paper, larger than the length of the notebook and make a zigzag fold at the sides to fit the notebook and glue the sides and bottom part to create a pocket.

If you make any of these notebooks, feel free to share in my page.Also if you like this post, feel free to share it with your friends on facebook,twitter,Instagram or pin it for later.If you have missed my other valentine's day projects ,below are the links

http://vikalpah.blogspot.com/2014/01/wooden-clothpin-gifts-for-valentines-day.html

http://vikalpah.blogspot.com/2014/01/wooden-clothpin-gifts-for-valentines-day.html

Have fun crafting !!!