Learning how to make a notebook is easy! My daughter loves to color and especially likes the “girlies” I draw for her. While I appreciate sharing creative time with her, it becomes taxing to draw them as quickly as she can color them. This easy DIY coloring book solved my artistic limitations, and I bet it could be used for many other ideas – party favors, personalized grocery list, or even a gift memo pad.
I’m Jenn from A Jennuine Life, here to share this quick and fun handmade notebook project. I made this in preparation for family air travel we had planned, and it worked like a charm!
All you need is your subject drawing or printout, a printer/copier, a scrap of cardboard, and access to a sewing machine. I used a box from a snack package cut to size to use as the rigid backing for my notebook. I drew four different versions of the “girlies” onto two pages and scanned them into our home printer and printed five copies of each.
Don’t worry, I have no illusions that I’m a great artist. Arden seems to appreciate them, and that’s what matters, right? I cut the girls to the size of the cardboard backing.
I gathered the whole bundle together and used a binder clip to keep everything aligned while I sewed the notebook together. I set the stitch length a little longer than normal and carefully turned the hand wheel to gently press the needle through all the layers. I wouldn’t recommend trying to use machine power to do this – you’ll likely break a needle. Be sure to take the binder clip off as you approach it with the stitches.
Here they all are!
I added a special message on the back. She’s four so she can’t read, but I know what it says.
This coloring book was put to the test and it performed beautifully! My only complaint is that she colors so quickly that she was more than halfway done with her “girlies” on the flight out! We found an added benefit to sewing the pages together in that the perforations made it easy to pull out pages she wanted to show to Grandma.
I hope you enjoyed this project – I’d love to see your version if you make one.