The Need for {DIY} Speed :: Fabric Covered Notebook

Last updated on 23 May 2022

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Welcome to a new series, where I share DIY tutorials that you can do in half an hour or under. These tutorials will be crafty ones, and also home-ware-type DIYs. For the first one ever, here’s how to make a fabric covered notebook!

What you need to create a fabric covered notebook

• A notebook
• Some fabric
• Strong glue

This is so super easy and is so fast. If you think about it like covering your books with that pretty sticky cover stuff in primary school (we call it Duraseal, though I suspect that’s probably the brand). It’s just like that, and just as easy.

How to make a fabric covered notebook

Grab the notebook that you want to cover, and the fabric you want to use to cover it.

Open the notebook so it’s lying flat on your fabric. Make sure the fabric is right-side down.

Cut out your fabric around the notebook, leaving about an inch on all sides.

Using something like ModPodge, PVA glue, strong double-sided tape or something else that’s sticky, shut the notebook, and cover either the back or the front of it in your stickiness.

Carefully fold the fabric on top, pressing it down and making sure it’s flat, without bubbles or creases. Your fabric should be basically folded in half now, with one side stuck to the notebook.

Flip the whole thing over, and glue/tape/adhere the other side to the fabric.

Note: If you have a spiral-bound notebook, this still works (as you can see I had a spiral-bound notebook) just at this point, make sure you can still easily open it and lie the notebook flat.

So now you’ve got the two sides stuck, but you’ve got all this extra fabric around the edges.

Open your notebook again, and you’re going to fold in the extra side bits like a present. Fold the corners in to form triangle shapes on the end, and then fold the whole thing onto the inside of the back/front of your notebook.

Adhere down.

Note: If you have a spiral-bound notebook, you may have to cut a little in the centre of the extra fabric and fold the corners like presents from here. If you don’t, you can just do one big fold across both sides of the notebook and tuck the centre under the pages, just like you would when covering your school books.

Once you’ve done all that it should look pretty neat. If you’re not happy with fraying edges, you can grab a piece of funky paper and stick it over the entire front/back covers, covering the material on the inside of the notebook. Alternatively, you can stick the first/last page over the top.

And you’re done! If you’ve used glue like ModPodge, I would advise waiting for it to dry completely before using it.

And it took less than 15minutes!  Super easy, but it looks super cute, and it’ll be different to everyone else’s notebooks, especially if you cover your school books or Uni books with fabric.

Have you ever covered a notebook in fabric? Will you give it a go?