Make It Today Monday: Handy Notable!

How's Life Friends?

Here's a Make It Today Monday tutorial for one of my go-to gift ideas. You can use any craft papers you might have on hand, or you can just start with a plain piece of 8.5 x 11 inch cardstock and stamp it yourself to make your own design. Or a mixture of layering both--it's up to you!

For this example I used a plain piece of Garden Green cardstock and layered some Heartwarming Hugs DSP, and Trimming the Town DSP.

I made myself a template years ago and wrote the instructions/dimensions on it. I used to just position it on top of a piece of cardstock and use the guidelines on it for scoring and cutting. I recently tried just going for it by putting it in my paper trimmer and doing all the cutting and scoring all together. I like this way of doing it:

1. Place 8 1/2 x 11 inch piece of cardstock with long side along top of paper trimmer and cut off 1/8"

2. Slide cardstock to the right until the left edge is at 10" and score.

3. Slide another 1/4" to the right until the left edge is at 9 3/4" and score.

[These two lines form the spine of your little notebook cover]

4. Slide to the right again until the left edge is at 4 3/4" score all the way down.

5. Now turn the whole template counterclockwise 90 degrees [rotate once to the left so that the long side is running top to bottom on the score tool]

6. Slide to the right 1/2" [score at 1/2" all along the bottom/long side]

7. Cut the top half away down to the 3rd score line you made at 4 3/4" in Step 4

8. Trim the corner [we'll be folding this up, adding adhesive and adhering it to the panel from which we cut the corner away.

back view

9. Cut away the top of the pocket to create a pocket access

10. Crease all the score marks to allow for easy movement of cover.

11. Apply a double row of Stampin' Seal+ to strip at far edge; [this is where we will attach the left side of the jr. legal pad.]

12. Decorate to your heart's content/put fun things in the pocket/give it to someone special, or just use it yourself!

***The back of the project will show the cardboard backing of the jr. legal pad with a strip of the cardstock you attached. You could always add a bit more back there to cover it or just leave it as is.

If you have any questions just email me or post them in the comments below and I'll be happy to address them. I'm hoping to do a quick video soon to show the steps, but until then...

Be well friends!

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