~thrifty thursday~{what to do with old books}

This project would make a great hostess gift for a book worm, or a great end of the year gift for a teacher paired with a Barnes and Noble gift card.

{it's what I'm giving!}

Today I will show you how you can make little notebooks our of old hardcover books. 

It's super easy and only a few supplies are needed:

paper cutter

crop a dile

hole punch

paper

old hardcover books

printable library cards

and number labels

{look for the free downloads below}

and

1" book rings

 Start out with a variety of books in colors you like.

Plain covers are fine, but ones with fun graphics are even better.

I found vintage kids books to be really fun for this project.

I picked up my books at a local thrift shop for around 69 cents a piece.

 Believe it or not, I also found this cute paper at the same thrift store.

I also used a variety of other papers such as cream card stock and wide ruled paper, 

that I had at home.

 A heavy duty paper cutter comes in handy for this project, but you could use scissors.

 Gently rip the cover, binding and all, from the book pages.

Then trim the front and back and discard the binding, or save it for another project!

 Using your crop a file, punch 2 holes in the book cover and back.

Using those holes as a template, punch holes with a regular hole punch in your paper.

You can make your notebook as thick as you want. 

Obviously you will trim your paper to the size of the book, or a little smaller.

Then you put the whole thing together with 1" book rings.

Super simple! 

 I dressed up the inside cover with a envelope and vintage library card I printed out.

 I love having notepads everywhere because I am constantly jotting notes and ideas down.

 I made a couple with little golden books too.

 On some of the ones with plainer covers, I added these vintage looking tags with numbers on them.

 In one afternoon I made about 15.

 Feel free to print these images out on card stock for your own use.

The number labels are from here.

 I searched under vintage library cards on Pinterest and found this first one.

If you copy them to a word document, you can size them and print them out.

 This one is from here.

And, when you are all done, bundle up your naked books in twine for a

 little Restoration Hardware inspired decor!

 The labels look cute on these too!

I hope you liked this weeks project!

xoxo