Do your kids doodle a lot?
Kids love doodling! We all know that. They write on whatever surface they see – scrap paper, book covers and even the walls of our house if we’re not diligent! If your kids are very fond of writing or drawing, here’s a nice idea to give or better yet make with them: journals made from recycled materials.
Buying the kids new notebooks is easy, but creating one makes it special. Obviously, these are very inexpensive (or free) because you will be using materials already found in your home. Plus you get to teach your little ones the attitude of recycling first rather than buying brand new things everytime.
This beautiful journal is perfect for them… fun and free to make and easy to replace if they fill them up on the first day. Ha ha!
Materials:
- 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheets of Good Writing Paper
- Thicker/Tough Material for Cover (such as paper bags or old book jacket, leather bag)
- String or Cord (for binding the journal)
Tools:
- Scissors
- Iron
Steps:
All we’re going to do is fold our sheet in half once. Folding a single page gives you four pages for writing in your journal, so consider how many pages you want when the journal is done.
If you want a smaller journal, all you need to do is fold and tear each sheet in half, and then fold one more time for your (roughly) 4×5 journal.
Each leaf of the journal (and the cover) need about a half inch tear along each end of the crease. Your binding is going to loop around the crease and ‘sit’ in this tear.
Simply identify an interesting part of your recycled material that will serve as a cover, taking into account images, etc. In the pic, you can see that I lay my pages over the grocery bag, aligning it to avoid the messy bits (handles and glued parts). It was easy to find a continuous section that had interesting graphics and no glue or overlaps.
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