Quick & Easy Notebook Makeover

Every year, the girls age 12-18 who attend my church go to Girl's Camp. It's a much anticipated venture out into "the wild" (just how "wild" depends greatly on your personal relationship with nature), full of fabulous memories, and, naturally, lots of cute goodies and gifts. 

Let me rephrase that.

LOTS of cute goodies and gifts. 

I was asked last-minute to come up with a way to decorate some 3x5 Walmart notebooks with the camp theme for this year--

"My Story Begins..."

And thus my Quick & Easy notebook makeover was born. It's a great scrap-buster, for those of you scrapbook-ers and card makers. 

The notebooks came in a pack of four--red, green, blue, and black. There was a "cover sheet" of sorts with the notebooks sizing information on it, and that is what I used to cut my template. I literally held it up under the wire rings and trimmed off the 1/8" or so extra. 

Next I dug out all the DCWV stacks I acquired during a paper frenzy a couple years back. I primarily used the Glitter Stack (8x8) and the All Dressed Up Stack (8x8), although I did use one or two of the papers from the Animal Crackers Stack (4.5x6.5). I tried my best to coordinate the papers I chose with either red, green, blue, or black.

I simply traced around my template, and cut out my rectangles with plain old scissors.

Slap some glue with a glue stick, and voila!

A mini notebook that's a little less boring, that's for dang sure!

I printed up a whole sheet of just "My Story Begins..." and cut them out by hand as well, until I had enough strips. I left a little extra on the edges to wrap underneath the cover. I used a basic glue stick to attach this, as well. You could also do some fun 3D effects here, depending on what supplies you have in your stash. Throw on some ribbons, buttons, get fancy with the placement of the words--you name it. I wanted to keep mine easy and simple so a simple band across the bottom (or wherever felt the most "balanced" with the print of the paper) was what I went with.

I have to admit--when I saw that each pack of four came with a black one I was a little bit disappointed, as I am a lover of color. But the black and silver ones ended up being some of my favorites from the bunch!

Turned out pretty cute, dont'cha think?