[DIY] How To: Decorate (Composition) Notebook

Happy end of the week!

Bored of your plain composition notebooks/spiral notebooks/notebooks of any kind? Don't want to spend an outrageous amount for a cutesy decorated notebook at the store? Feeling a bit... crafty? (Do I sound like a salesperson? haha) Anyways...here's a quick and easy way to decorate your notebooks!

I was frantically looking for a notebook for school (since I will be starting Monday!), and I didnt want to use a spiral, so I found an old composition notebook lying around that had just a couple pages used.  It's such a waste to throw a notebook away, so I made it look nicer and better than ever!

**Since it is still back to school season, you can find regular notebooks of all sorts and sizes for inexpensive prices all over the place!**

Hopefully this will give you some inspiration/ideas on how to decorate your own notebooks! :]

Things you need:

• Your notebook. of course!
• Two sheets of scrapbook paper (I got mine here!)
• Some type of Adhesive (I experimented with double sided tape, glue, and glue stick)
• Scissors (I also used an x-acto knife and scrapbooking scissors, but those are optional)
• Writing utensil (Pencil)

Steps I Took: (feel free to change things up a bit to your fitting!)

1. Grab some of that double sided tape (glue works, but I found it easier to use the tape) and add a couple strips of tape right next to the binding.
2. Take your first scrapbook paper and line it up against the binding and the bottom (or top!) edge.  The tape should keep the side next to the binding in place.
3. Trace the outline of the cover and carefully cut off any excess. Be extra careful around the edges. (I still kept the taped section on while I was doing this, but you can carefully peel the paper off and place it back on when you're done. Double sided tape is extra sticky!)
1. (Optional) If you so desire, use your x-acto knife to fix up any edges.
4. Since I didn't want to use too much glue (to avoid the bumpy texture), I used the double sided tape around the middle of the notebook and used a bit of glue along the edges to keep the paper together with the cover.
1. I used binder clips to keep the paper down after using glue, and wiped off the excess glue to prevent random glue marks. Wait for it to dry.
5. Repeat on back cover!
6. (Optional) It looked plain to me, and I didn't want to go too crazy on the design, so I added a rectangular "info box" type thing using the scrapbooking scissors. Since paper on paper isn't the same as paper on glossy cardboard, I just used a glue stick for this step, making sure the frilly edges would stay down. (I'll probably write in "Notebook" or the class or something like such in the box.)
7. (Additonal Optional Step) I wanted to add something to the inside cover, so I used the leftover paper to make a vertical stripe design. (Let's throw in some math for equal vertical stripes!) 
1. Measure width of the inside cover (short side), and figure out how many strips you want (even number if you want alternating!)
2. Divide the total width of the cover by the number of strips you want, and that will be the size of the widths of your strips. (Total width/number of strips=size of width of each strip)
3. Cut, cut, cut!
4. Place strip one at a time, cut off any excess, and glue it down. (Excess paper can be used to make cute little gift tags!)
5. Repeat until you're done!
8. And that's it! It would look cute as the cover too!

Hopefully you enjoyed my little notebook decorating idea! And hopefully you get some inspiration too! 

Have a lovely weekend! :]