As I’ve said in recent posts, it has been a crazy time in my house. Between writing 4 new poems for Whispers & Echoes (plus 5 flash fiction pieces that were just accepted), collaborating with Casey Renee Kiser on a new poetry collection, 433 Lighted Way, taking a road trip to Canada, and preparing to quit my job and go to grad school, things have been busy. Therefore, crafting tutorials have been on the back burner for a bit. But I’m doing my best to get back into the swing of things.

I am guilty of having a lot of receipt, partially because I have no impulse control when it comes to reserving materials at the library. Every time something gets put on the hold’s shelf for me, it comes with a little paper receipt. I mostly use them for grocery lists and scrap paper, but they are also a perfect fit for creating notebooks, because they are all the same size.

Gas station receipts also work well because they are narrow.

Now without further ado, here is a great way to upcycle some of your unwanted receipts to make a handy little notebook.

Supplies:

  • Receipts with black backs
  • Scissors
  • White glue
  • Hot glue gun and glue
  • Used Command strips
  • Cardstock/ thick paper for covers (I used some spare valentine cards)
  • Clothespins/ chip clips
  • Optional: packing tape for reinforcement
  • Optional: Painter’s tape for extra hold power
1. Determine the size of your notebook and cut two covers to fit, leaving a little extra on the left-hand side to attach them together. I used some old Valentine’s Day cards, which were a perfect size. Cut the receipts to slightly smaller than your cover pieces on each side.
2. Once your receipt slips are roughly the same size, clothespin them together and apply an ample amount of white glue to the top to connect them. This will hold them together, but also allow you to easily rip off pieces as needed.
If you so desire, you can also add a layer of painter’s tape to the top to ensure they stay in place. This also acts as a straightedge to use when ripping sheets from the pad and gives a nice surface to use when attaching the paper to the notebook.
3. To attach your covers, make a thin fold on the side you want to connect (left side of front cover, right side of back cover).
4. Then attach the folded sections together with hot glue to form a book.
Easy book
5. Using hot glue, attach the notepad to the back cover. If you used painter’s tape, you can add a line of glue to the tape on the back of the notepad and adhere to the back cover. Otherwise, you can just glue the back sheet to the back cover.
6. If you choose to, you can reinforce attached sections such as the spine of the book or the top of the notepad with packing tape.
7. To create a clasp for your book, remove any remaining stickiness from a used Command Strip. Cut a small section from one end (to be used on the front of your book), leaving the other section long to act as a strap.
8. Use hot glue to attach the smaller piece to the front of your book, rough side up.
9. Turn over and attach the longer strip to the back, smooth side up so the rough side can wrap around and attach to the front of the book.
To attach, simply “click” the longer piece to the small piece at the front, which will clasp your notebook closed when not in use. For added support, you can reinforce where the back strip attaches to the back cover with packing tape because apparently I love packing tape.
Create perfect-sized notebooks that will fit in bags, backpacks, purses, and even pockets if you’re lucky enough to have pockets on your clothing (why can’t women’s clothing designers figure out pockets already?!).

BONUS USE:

A few months ago, my husband and I had some downtime between a wedding ceremony and the reception. Luckily, I happened to have two of these handy notebooks in my purse. We spent the time playing tic tac toe, dots and boxes, hangman, and Battleship.

Impromptu Battleship