DIY Photo Covered Notebooks

Detailed DIY instructions for using your photographs to decorate and personalize the covers of plain notebooks.

Hey everyone! Can we talk about how easy it is to take a ton of gorgeous photos all the time? Now that we’re all carrying amazing cameras, disguised as phones, right in our back pockets or purses? And let’s also talk about how hard it is to do anything with all. those. photos. Some will get posted to social media, maybe we’ll print a few, and maybe even frame them and hang them on the wall. Or give them as gifts…

DIY Photo Covered Notebooks | Use your own photos to decorate and personalize your notebooks | personallyandrea.com

So here’s a fun, pretty and practical way to show off some of your photography. Use it to cover some plain notebooks and make them as gorgeous and unique as you are. If you’re anything like me you can never have enough notebooks!

Materials:

1. plain covered, sewn binding notebooks like these, or these.

2. fine art printer paper (not photo paper)

3. spray adhesive

4. paper cutter, or metal straight-edge ruler and x-acto knife

Instructions:

1. The most important part is to measure what size you need to print the photo. Print the photo about 3 cm or half an inch larger in height and width than the full size of the cover. Carefully trim excess edges away from your photo. Measure twice, cut once.

Tip 1: Some of the larger notebooks are 21 cm or 8.25 inches high, which means you’ll have to print a borderlesss photo on letter size paper.

Tip 2: To start, it’s probably best to choose a photo that doesn’t matter if it’s cropped a little, and doesn’t matter if it’s extremely straight. Give yourself a little wiggle room.

2. Protect your work surface with some old papers or a drop sheet. Lay your printed photo paper reverse side up. Lightly and evenly spray the reverse side of your photo paper. Give the adhesive a minute to set (see instructions on the can of your specific brand), then lay the front notebook cover evenly just inside the left edge of the photo paper. Lift the other half of the photo paper and tightly wrap it around to the back of the notebook. Press down to all the edges to smooth and secure the photo.

3. Now you can take a break. I set mine under a large heavy book for a few hours to allow the adhesive to set.

4. Next get out your cutting tools and trim away the excess paper from the edges of the notebook. Pay extra attention around the edges of the spine, and the rounded corners, which are a little trickier to do. A pair of tiny sharp scissors sometimes works well.

5. Optionally, you can attach a label to the front of your notebook. I love these metal label frames around a scripted tag, but I'll talk about that in another post!

Open up your gorgeous, personalized photo-covered notebook and start writing, journalling, doodling or sketching. And tell all your friends… “I made it myself!".

Happy crafting!