These pretty little handmade notebooks are made with collage paper, newsprint, embroidery floss, and greeting cards. You can use blank greeting cards or used cards to make your notebook covers, giving you a great way to re-use your latest pile of birthday or holiday greetings. First, take your greeting card and your collage paper and plot out how you'd like to arrange the paper. Try to cover every bit of the card. If you're using a used greeting card as your base, make sure that the paper you are using to cover the card is thick enough to hide any pictures or text. They will look fugly when they show through.
Next, use your favorite paper glue to cover every bit of the card with your collage paper. I use a glue stick, since I find school glue or mod podge gets my paper too wet (then it warps!).
Carefully trim the cover after it has dried to make sure all of your edges are even.
Measure your card, then cut 15 – 20 rectangles of blank newsprint in a slighty smaller size than your card. I would suggest going at least 1/2 inch smaller on all sides. You can cut these by hand, but if you have a real paper cutter, it will make your pages come out much more evenly. As you can probably tell, mine were hand cut. Fold your pages in half and place them inside your cover. Using your favorite punching tool, poke holes through the center fold of your pages and cover simultaneously. I'm crazy, so I use a dremel with a drill bit. I've seen folks use awls, heavy duty paper punches, and a huge variety of other things to poke these holes. Just choose your favorite and go for it. Just make sure your holes are all lined up nicely, or stitching it will be a huge pain, maybe even impossible.
Now take some string and thread it onto a nice big sewing needle. A tapestry needle would be ideal. I used embroidery floss to bind my notebooks, but you can use any kind of sturdy thread or string. Some good ideas would be twine, hemp, or very strong yarn. Stitch through the holes in the book in one direction, like so:
Then, turn around and stitch in the other direction. While you are going this direction, slip your needle through the next stitch over every chance you get, this will make each stitch more even and secure. See what I mean?
Tie a knot when you get back to the beginning.
Fold the notebook back down. It won't want to stay closed very much, so you should press it under something really heavy for a few hours, or maybe even overnight.
