Simple Ideas to Transform Composition Notebooks

Feb 7, 20214 min read

Updated: Mar 31, 2021

Do you enjoy crafting and making gifts for others? This is a simple, creative and fun project. I have just finished transforming inexpensive composition books into beautiful works of art. The bulk of these will go to my Bible Study group. The others to my girls.

One of my daughters' loves unicorns and I made one with unicorns on the paper and painted her initial on the front cover to send to her for Valentine's day.

Front and Back of the one I made for Kaitlin

Here is one I made for my other daughter, Madeline.

This one has a Valentine Theme. She loves to journal, so this will speak love to her every time she gets it out to write.

You can use them personally or give to others. I have also seen these on Etsy if you want to make them to sell to others. They are beautiful and inexpensive to make. You can place words of encouragement, scriptures, or any other title you wish. They are beautiful even without words!

I have seen many ways to make these and I would encourage you to get ideas here and check out other websites. This will help spark ideas for you. I am sure you will come up with some amazing creative notebooks!

Simple Notebooks

Lets start with supplies for simple notebooks. I would like to share with you what I used when I first learned to make these a few years ago.

Basically we took a composition notebook, measured the notebooks and cut decorative paper to fit front and back.(You can draw around the notebook to get the size to cut or use a ruler.)

Then we spread mod podge on front and then back cover and pasted down the colorful paper.

Do one side at a time allowing it to dry. (You may want to put wax paper inside the front and back covers to prevent mod podge from dripping and causing pages to stick.)

Next we spread both sides of the cover again with mod podge. This is on top of the decorative paper.) Do one side at a time and allow to dry before flipping it over to do the other side. Make sure to do cover with downward strokes. This will make the finished notebook look more polished.

It was simple and quick! The composition notebooks were transformed!

Here are supplies for making these simple notebooks.

Supply List

Composition Notebooks- you can purchase these at dollar stores, other department stores like Wal-mart, target, office supply stores, etc. (I paid $1.00, but many times you can find them on sale during school sales and they are 50 cents or less.)

Colorful paper, napkins, pictures from magazines, wrapping paper-use what you may have around the house for the binder cover.

scissors and a paper cutter if you have difficulty cutting straight

paintbrush or sponge for applying mod podge

Mod Podge- you can purchase at craft stores

wax paper (optional)

Other Supplies You Can Use if you want to decorate them more.

Stick on gems (I bought mine at the dollar store and Michaels on clearance.)

Decorative stickers or cut out shapes (I had some from past scrapbooking.)

I was excited to find these! A few were just 39 cents each.

Glittered and Jeweled Ribbon (I had ribbon) This can be used as a bookmarker by attaching to back cover and then pasting decorative paper over where it is attached. You can also purchase stretchy ribbon to keep notebooks closed. I used ribbon as decoration on the front cover for some of them. For others I used a stick on strip from my scrapbooking supplies.

Paint. I used folk art acrylic and gold glitter acrylic to paint binder strip to match paper.

Decorative Card Stock Paper (I used Recollections Happy Spring, Bloomfetti, and Bloomin Wild and some I already had on hand).

Sparkle mod podge - Hobby Lobby and Michaels sell it. I use this on top of the cover and back. Regular matte or satin to glue paper and ribbons down.

Sparkle Mod Podge

Flat Paint brush for painting binder and round paint brush if you do any lettering. I also used a stencil for initials on the front. I used the stencil to draw out the letter and painted it.

Sample Transformed Composition Notebooks

Here are the notebooks I made to help give you more ideas. Some people decorate the inside cover, I didn't because it has a printed schedule people can use if they wish.

Front and Back