DIY Mini Sketchbooks

These adorable mini sketchbooks are made using cereal boxes.  Who loves to recycle? I do!!!  

This project can be done in about 30 minutes, or you can make it shorter by prepping the cover and paper ahead of time.

What you will need:

• Cereal boxes
• Exacto knife
• Scissors
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Paper cutter
• Paper (any color you like)
• Liquid glue
• Glue stick
• Washi tape (my newest obsession)

First thing: decide how big you want your sketchbook to be.  Mine are 3 3/4 x 3 inches with 1/2 inch at the top for the binding.  So overall I cut a piece of cereal box into an 8x3 inch strip.

Using your ruler, find the middle of the strip and mark with a little line.  I gave my sketchbook 1/2 inch for the binding.  Measure and mark with two lines all the way across.  

Now it's time for the exacto knife. Draw the knife lightly across your lines.  DO NOT cut all the way through the strip.  You want to use little pressure, just enough to help you fold the strip easily.  Bend along the lines to create the top edge.

Cut a stack of paper just slightly smaller than your cover.  For instructions on gluing the pages and cover see my past post on mini notebooks here.

Here's what the sketchbooks look like assembled.  Pretty boring, right?

Of course we need to jazz these up a bit...

That's what we have Washi Tape for!

With the help of the wonderful Robin, we decorated our sketchbooks.  Robin lined hers with hot pink paper just using a glue stick and trimming off the extra paper.  I covered mine in white paper.  Then we dove into the Washi Tape and had a lot of fun.  There were so many patterns to choose from, it took us a bit to decide what to put on our new sketchbooks.  Here's what we came up with:

Enjoy!