Look what I did! How to cover a composition book in fabric...

Here is my newest little project that I completed a few hours ago!

During my pregnancy, I've been keeping a journal to document how things have been going.  I think that my daughter will enjoy reading it someday.  With Brennan, I bought a pregnancy book to fill out, but only filled in about half of it.  Some of the questions were just so hard to answer!  This way, I can just write an entry every couple of days and I'll have most of the details recorded. 

When deciding on a book to journal in, I had a few criteria to consider.

1. I wanted it to be cheap.  Really cheap.
2. I wanted it to have a cover that was pretty gender specific, instead of gender neutral like everything I bought during my first pregnancy.  This time we were finding out the sex of our baby, so I wanted to be able to use that information for a few different things.
3. I wanted it to be big enough so that I wouldn't run out of pages, without being excessively huge so that most of the pages would go unused.

I had one big problem... I wanted to start this journal as soon as I found out I was pregnant, to record the entire pregnancy, but I wouldn't know the sex of my baby until approximate 16-18 weeks.  I didn't want to have to re-copy all of the entries from one book to another-that would take up too much time and be mind numbing!  So I thought about it a little bit and came up with an awesome solution: get one of those cheap black and white composition books and cover it with fabric once we know the gender!

I hoped I wouldn't run into problems with the material bunching or wrinkling.  That was my main concern.  Lucky for me, my plan worked like a charm.  This was so easy and I think it turned out so cute!  I may not even be finished with it.  I can kind of envision a coordinating ribbon  run around the cover about 1/3 of the way down.  Maybe it'll even need a little birdie applique over the ribbon, or some sort of title...  After all, I need the outside to be EXTRA cute to make up for my not-so-cute penmanship on the inside (honestly- I write like an 8 year old boy...)!

Here's how I did it:

1. Gather a composition book, your choice of fabric that will be large enough to overlap the edges of the book by about 1/2", a scissors, and some adhesive spray.  Check to see if the pattern of the composition book shows through your fabric.  If it does, you'll want a white sheet of paper or a piece of white material to first cover the book in.
2. If you are using a white 'base layer', you'll need to do this step.  Lay out a lot of newspaper to protect your workspace from the adhesive spray.  Lay your white layer on the newspaper and spray it with a coat of adhesive spray.  Place your book onto the paper.  Press and smooth the paper out on the front and back covers.  Next, take your scissors and trim the paper along the edges of the notebook.  You don't need to leave any extra- just trim it flush with the edge of the book.
3. Next, lay out more fresh newspaper and lay down your piece of fabric.  Spray it with a coat of adhesive spray.  Place your book onto the fabric.  Press and smooth the fabric out on the front and back covers.
4. Using your scissors, carefully trim out a small section of the overlapping fabric at the top and bottom of the binding to allow the fabric to be folded into the front and back covers.
5. Now, open the book and press both corners of your fabric on the front cover in at 45 degree angles.  Press the rest of the overhanging fabric down carefully after the corners are pressed in.  Repeat with the back cover.
6. You can either choose to be finished at this point (I did) or you can cut a rectangular piece of paper or fabric (if you use fabric, you'll need to turn the edges under with adhesive spray, double sided tape, or a sewing machine) and place it on the inside of the front and back covers to cover the raw edges and give it a more professional look.

I love how my book turned out, at least so far, and if anyone else does this, I'd love to see some pictures!  Just comment with a link or send them to colleen_m_anderson@yahoo.com!

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