DIY Stationery Booklet

As a celebration of craft month, I decided to do a little crafting project with some extra supplies I had at hand with nothing to do. I think crafting is one of the best things to do to decompress from the whole week or when you just need a little bit of self-love. I always make a mess when crafting but the satisfaction of the final product is enough to get me through cleaning it all up afterward. I made a full stationery booklet with a notepad, folder pockets, an accordion folder, bookmarks, sticky notes and a journal slide in to put a thin journal. I know it seems like a bit much but it truly isn’t difficult to make.

In most of my photos, I put a big piece of poster board behind whatever the thing I’m taking a photo of to give it a clean background. One of the poster board that I tend to use got really wrinkled and since I didn’t want to use it behind my photos anymore, I moved on to making something out of it and that’s how this stationery booklet came about.

Supplies

I will make sure to link most of the supplies I’ll be using throghout the DIY.

• Cardstock
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Glue Stick
• Clear Glue
• Paper
• Stapler
• Sticky Notes
• Journal of Your Choice
• Thin Notepad
• Bookmarks

Process

The first thing I did was measure out the body of the booklet. It kind of depends on the journal you are planning to put inside it and in my case, I’m putting one of my traveler’s notebook’s insert because I tend to make a bunch of them interchange them once one fills up. I will make sure to leave all the measurements in the pictures in case you want to make it just as I did.

One of them has a little side flap to put the slide in a journal and two of them have a side pocket to do the folder section.

You may also want to cut little 1cm long pieces to so you can glue them to some parts of the booklet to put in bookmarks and put the notepad as you will see going forward.

After cutting all of your cardstock pieces, glue all the flaps and staple the body pieces in the middle. In the picture, I will show where you should apply glue.

Now you can glue the strips of cardstock on the page you want to put the bookmarks and one at the top of the page you want to put a notepad.

You can make your own notepad by cutting pieces of paper and adding clear glue at the top of them so you can write on a piece of paper and take it out. I made mine with recycled notebook paper that I cut out in the size that would fit the booklet.

Decoration

Now we can get onto the fun part which is decorating. And after decorating, add the remaining pieces and the accordion folder section.

I used a variety of supplies to decorate the journal. I mostly used watercolors, gel pens, and Crayola super tips to make pretty headers. I also used some recycled scraps of paper I had saved up because I don’t throw anything away and I stripped the borders to give it a more vintage sort of look and covered most of the pieces with a light hand at watercolor. By doing this, I wanted to sort of break down the pinkness of the whole booklet and tone it down a bit because it was too pink for my taste.

(Little tip: Use a glue stick to glue the papers instead of the liquid glue because the liquid glue doesn’t glue the paper in a uniform way.)

To decorate the cover piece, I outlined the paper with a marker and did a little border of stars. I then doodled an aerial globe and added my favorite quote from Dr. Seuss.

Next, we have the notepad section that I left really simple with just the header piece of paper and a pink watercolor border. After the notepad, I made the folder section in which I put big pieces of paper with a light watercolored overlay and did the same pink border on the pockets.

Now we have what I believe to be my favorite section which is my bookmarks and sticky notes. I put the magnetic bookmarks that I had in the strips of cardstock to hold the down and a couple Walt Disney Studios sticky notes I hadn’t manage to use up until now because they are too pretty.

Accordion Folder Section

Then we have the accordion folder that I will show you how to make in the next pictures.

As you saw from the pictures, it was a matter of knowing where to put the glue. I learned how to make this type of accordion folder from a tutorial on penpal letter flipbooks or something like that that I will make sure to link here.

Lastly, is the journal section in which a put a traveler’s notebook insert and a little quote on the left side to fill the space without having to add something extra that would make the booklet too bulky. And to close the stationery booklet, I used a binder clip to keep it all together.

You can make this DIY for yourself or to give as a gift for any stationery lover friends you may have. I hope you are having a lovely March so far and that your month continues to be great and awesome. If you are interested in more fun content like this, you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter to receive all the content that I post on a weekly basis and check out my social media for more.

Be Yourself, Be Happy, Be Human.
xoxo, Patrick.