Wednesday 28 March 2012

Make it - covered notebooks

Hello everyone, sorry I have been away for a while.  The house move went well and we are still slowly unpacking, but feeling much more settled now.  It's all very exciting as I have so much more space, so I can spread out with all my creative bits and bobs!

Right, as I am making our new home look as pretty as possible, I decided to cover my little cash books that I use for keeping record of my freelance work.  You can probably use this method for almost any book you want to cover!  I just used some scraps of fabric I had lying around.  The best thing about this crafty project is that it's really quick to do!

These are the cash books I'm talking about...

You will need:
Book/s to cover
Fabric to cover with (fashion fabric seems to be best as it's not too thick).
Iron
Fabric scissors
double sided sticky tape

1. Iron your fabric.  
2. Open up the book and place face down then cut around it leaving a 3cm border at least.

3. Stick the double sided tape to the back of the book so you have the edges covered all the way round and a few strips in the middle to hold the fabric in place.

4. Take off the strips to reveal the other side of the sticky tape.

5. Smooth the fabric down onto the book sweeping with your hand from one side to the other.  If it goes wrong you can pull it up and re-do.

6. Do the front of the book in the same way.

7. Now we will fold all the edges over nice and neatly like the first edge I've shown above!

8. Where the spine of the book is, snip the edge fabric in-line with the spine on the top and bottom.  This is so you can fold up the edges easily.

NB: My books only need one snip as they are only folded once to create the spine.  If your book has a thick spine I would snip on both spine folds/edges instead of down the middle.  So you will make 4 cuts in total.


9. To fold the edges over neatly, stick a strip of double sided tape to the very edge of your fabric (as above), peel off the strip and fold over on itself.  Don't stick to the inside of the book yet.

10. Above picture shows what your first fold will look like, make sure you leave enough hem/edge to cover the width of the tape again.

11. Stick another strip of double sided to the inside edge of the book cover, take the strip off and stick the fabric down to create a neat edge.

12. Do the same for all edges.

NB:  For the corners, you can either leave straight or tuck the corner under diagonally.  I have left them all straight.

13. This is what all 3 sides should look like once you've finished.

NB:  If you did have a thicker spine on your book, at this point I would probably stick a small bit of tape to the small tab of fabric, as near to the spine as possible, then cut the fabric down so it will tuck over and in.  So it will be very short.... then stick it down, maybe poke it with a pencil if too fiddly.

And then you can go on to cover as many books as your heart desires!

 Ahh pretty!







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