DIY Make your own personalised notepad

You will be surprised to learn how easily you can create your very own personalised notepad in a few steps. I am a big fan of notebooks and notepads as I always need to take notes throughout the day. In fact I love beautiful stationery in general and always spend a lot of time selecting the most stunning items. This is the reason why I find it quite chic and original to make my own notepad with a design I love.
Follow me if you would like to learn how to do this too. You can also see my Japanese notebook stab binding DIY for another great binding technique.

This post was first published on Zalora community Hong Kong.

make your own personalised notepad diy

 

Supplies needed

  • A4 paper 80gsm
  • A4 cardboard of your choice – I took craft cardboard
  • Paper trimmer
  • Mod Podge + transparent gelatin powder or sheets – (optional) or padding compound
  • Paint brush
  • Binder clips

supplies needed for custom notepad

 

DIY steps

1. Design your typical page and print it!

Prepare a custom design for your notepad using any office software (Word, Pages) or Photoshop if you have it.

To make one similar to mine, simply put some grey lines, add an image decor of your choice for the background. Place a white rectangle on top of it and adjust the transparency until you get the result you like. My transparency was set to 65%.
Then you can also add your name or initials to customise even more.

Copy your design 4 times so that it fills the A4 format and print as many pages as you want to fill your notepad with. I made a small one by printing 8 pages.
Go to my free printable page for this design in psd (photoshop) format and more DIY patterns.

2. Cut it!

Cut your pages in 4 precisely using the paper trimmer.
Do the same with your cardboard to prepare the back of your notepad.
Cut also 1 more scrap paper to this format if you have or just know that 2 pages will be scraped from your total number of pages.

cut notepad pages

 

3. Glue it!

Make a pile with the 2 scrap pages on top, the typical pages in the middle and the cardboard at the back.
Tap it gently so that the top border of your sheets are well aligned.
Use your binder clips to hold the top sides (4).

Prepare your own homemade padding compound or buy it already made. I made mine with mod podge and some gelatine sheets.

padding compound homemade

Just melt the gelatine sheets in some hot water and mix it with mod podge in a jar (1).

Apply the padding compound using a small paint brush on the top edge of the sheets, try to apply a few layers to make sure you have covered all the sheets (2).

Use a tissue to remove the excess of padding compound on the backing cardboard.
Then put some more binder clips on this edge to press the sheets together (4).

glue your notepad pages

 

4. Let it dry and enjoy!

Let it dry for 12 hours.
Remove the binder clips with care and strip the first two scrap pages.

personalised notepad

You are done! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and you have learned how easy it is to create your own stationery.

I also made a special notepad for my beading works as you can see below.
These special notepads are available in my Etsy shop: they are made to prepare beading patterns in bead loom or brick stitch/peyote technique.

Bead loom and brick stitch grid notepad

You can find these useful notepads for Miyuki beading jewellery makers here.

50 pages notepad beading pattern grids

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