Decorative Moleskins!

   

If you're anything like me, you love keeping pocket sized journals in hand for all of your creative moments. Or even just to write down things you need to remember. There are fun and completely personalized. There are endless ways to decorate these notebooks. 

You can buy one here or follow these steps to make your own!

1. Find Your notebook! they have the plain cardboard moleskin notebooks at Dick Blick art supply or Barnes and Noble. Make sure you have the kind you want. Keep in mind that there are ones with blank pages, graphing pages or ruled pages. Also most papers do a better job of covering the smaller notebooks.

3. Next head to your favorite craft store for inspiration! I went to Michaels and picked out some tribal inspired papers…plus mustaches of course. Luckily the little cameras I got were stickers, but the little fame piece was not. :( If you find something like this I recommend gluing it on with E6000 glue and it won't be going anywhere. But wait! don't forget to cover your books with paper first…

4. Now lets turn those cardboard covers into patterned beauties. 

A. Measure the size of your notebook and draw out a rectangle on the wrong side of your paper that is 1 inch bigger on each side.

B. Cut out your rectangle and crease in half as evenly as you can.. Don't press too hard!

C. Now place a small dot one inch from the top and bottom of the crease. Draw a line from each top corner to the top dot and each bottom corner to the bottom dot. Now cut across all 4 of these diagonal lines.

D. Now its time to apple the paper! I've found that Mod Podge is best for this. It holds on well and doesn't warp anything. Take a paintbrush and paint Mod Podge all over the back cover. Place paper accordingly. Let it dry for a few seconds before you wrap the edges.

E. Last step! Time to wrap your edges! First find a ruler to score the edges after you fold them over. Your creases are much more precise and flat this way. Now unfold and cut the points off of each corner of the paper, it lays much flatter inside this way. With paper still unfolded pain Mod Podge onto the remaining edges of paper one at a time. Fold down and you may want to score some more while its's drying to make the paper lay as flat as possible.

 Now just repeat or the front side and have fun decorating!