If you've been saving old baby wipe containers and wondering what to actually do with them, this flip-through might be the answer. These five little vintage junk journals each use an altered baby wipe flip top as the cover — upcycled, embellished, and bound into proper writing journals with three signatures, lace closures, and tea-dyed pages throughout. The companion tutorial on altering the flip tops themselves is linked separately; this video is the reveal of what those altered tops eventually became.
What we cover
A flip-through of all five completed flip-top journals — the covers, closures, spine construction, interior signatures, and the embellishing choices that give each one its vintage character. I also talk through the key construction decisions: what went inside the spine, how the lace works as both covering and closure, and how I used paper scraps and tea-dyed pages to build a consistent feel across all five books.
What you'll learn
How to turn an altered baby wipe flip top into a working journal cover — the flip top becomes the front cover, hinged so it opens to reveal a small booklet tucked inside with a key charm closure. The flip top itself sits on top of a properly bound journal body rather than being the whole structure.
How to construct and reinforce a thin spine using lace, muslin, and cardstock, including:
- Gluing lace directly over the spine and wrapping it around to meet at the front
- Covering the lace with muslin or calico, also glued down
- Adding an extra layer of thick cardstock or cardboard inside the spine to give it structure — because without it, the spine on a book this size is too thin and flimsy to hold up well
How to build a lace closure with an eyelet — the same lace used on the spine gets cut into strips, and a hole punched with an eyelet creates a simple, clean closure that ties the whole look together.
Why old Reader's Digest books and vintage book pages make good journal pages — they bring their own texture and character, including the occasional deckled or ripped edge, which I kept and used as paper ruffles throughout the signatures rather than discarding them.
How to create a layered vintage feel using a mix of page sources, including:
- Pages from fairy books, poetry books, and encyclopedias for visual texture
- Pages from a 1956 typewriting book for that specific aged tone
- Edith Holden book pages for botanical warmth
How the tea dyeing process creates depth across papers — some pages come out with a heavily aged, dark vintage look; others come out lighter and cleaner. I mix coffee into the solution sometimes, and I add baking soda to make the paper less acidic. The variation between heavily dyed and lightly dyed pages is actually part of the design — the contrast between them gives the interior its range.
How to build in functional elements without overcomplicating the embellishing, including:
- Pockets made from folded old book pages
- A flip-out element sewn with a small signature booklet inside
- Paper ruffles from the deckled-edge strips trimmed off when cutting pages to size
- Metal corner protectors on all five journals for wear resistance
Tips & gotchas
If you live in a humid environment and have had trouble with hot glue not staying stuck, keep that in mind before relying on it for the flip top attachment. The flip tops on these journals are glued down with a hot glue gun — I made these nearly a year before filming and they've held fine, but humidity is a real variable with hot glue.
When tea dyeing paper, I add baking soda to the solution. It makes the paper less acidic, which matters if you want the pages to last. Coffee can go in too — it shifts the tone slightly and adds another layer of variation without a separate dyeing step.
The spine reinforcement is worth doing even when it feels like overkill. A journal this size doesn't have a lot of spine to work with, and without that extra piece of thick cardstock or cardboard tucked inside, the spine stays thin and vulnerable. Covering it with muslin is the finish — the structural piece underneath is what actually does the protecting.
Don't throw away your deckled-edge trimmings. When I was cutting old book pages down to size, I kept all the ripped-off strips and used them throughout the signatures as ruffles. They're already the right colour and texture, they cost nothing, and they add something that fresh-cut paper can't.
Three signatures, the same lace closure, the same spine treatment: you make one decision and repeat it. What changes is the paper selection and the embellishing, and that's where the real pleasure is. Each of the five ended up with its own word on the front — breathe, believe, life is beautiful, take chances, bu — and that small difference gives each one a distinct feeling even with an almost identical build underneath. That's what I find most satisfying about a run of journals like this: the structure holds, and the papers do the rest.
