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Personalized Notebooks

Customize plain notebooks with collaged covers tailored to each recipient. Brown paper bags make sturdy covers, and they're free! If you have guests, make sure there are enough scissors to go around.

Materials

• brown paper bags
• scrapbooking paper and colored card stock
• glue dots
• pencil

• blank notebooks (such as composition books)
• glue stick
• scissors

Instructions

1. Trace a notebook onto a paper bag. Cut out the shape and use a glue stick to adhere it to the front of the notebook.
2. Cut shapes from the decorative papers and arrange them on the notebook, adhering them with a glue stick or glue dots.

Tips:

THE 3-D VERSION: To add dimension to your collage, bend up the edges of your shapes before gluing them to the cover. Use this method to create a flower with pop: glue petaled circles in a stack from largest to smallest.

MONOGRAM: Top your cover with simple cutouts of your recipient's initials.

Bookmark Bracelet

A bookmark isn't much good if your child tends to lose it mid-read. This cute, interlocking bracelet solves that problem with a smile. When the bookworm isn't lying fl at inside a book, your child can fit the neck and tail together and wear it on a wrist.

Materials

• Strip of card stock
• Black marker

• Scissors

Instructions

1.  Start with a strip of card stock roughly 1 inch wide and long enough to overlap your reader's wrist by a couple of inches. Trim the strip into a worm by tapering the ends into a head and tail. Cut perpendicular slits at the worm's neck and tail, as shown.
2.  Draw a mouth and eye with a black marker.

Book Blankets

Give favorite books the protection they deserve with these felt book covers. Customize your cover with a notebook pocket, faux button closure, or penholder.

Materials

• Felt
• Ruler
• Scissors
• Pins

• Embroidery thread and needle
• Button (optional)
• Self-adhesive Velcro dot (optional)

Instructions

1. To make a cover, open your chosen book and measure the width and height. Add one inch to each measurement and cut out a piece of felt with those dimensions. For the inside flaps, cut two additional pieces of felt the same height as the main piece and two-thirds the width of the closed book's front cover.
2. Lay an inside flap on top of each end of the main piece and pin the flaps and the main piece together. With embroidery thread, sew a running stitch about 1/4 inch to 3/8 inch from the edge around the entire border.
3. If you like, add one of these extras:
   
   Notebook pocket: Before attaching the inside flaps, cut a piece of felt that's 1 1/2 inches wider and 1/2 inch shorter than your notepad. Sew it in the center of what will be the front cover of the book.
   
   Faux button closure: Before attaching the inside flaps, cut a strap that's 1 1/2 inches wide and as long as the width of an inside flap. Sandwich the strap between the back flap and the cover and pin it in place, then sew around the entire edge of the cover, as noted above. With scissors, round the end of the strap and sew on a button. Affix a self-adhesive Velcro dot to the strap and the front of the cover.
   
   Penholder: After the cover is finished and on the book, cut a 1 3/4-inch square out of felt. With the book cIosed, lay the square over a pen on the book's spine and pin it in place. Take the cover off the book, then sew on the square.