If you've got scraps of fabric sitting around from other projects — odd strips of calico, a bit of lace, some leftover scrapbook paper — this short tutorial shows you what to do with them. I'm making handmade bookplates here: layered fabric labels that sit on the front of a junk journal and give it that finished, personal feel. The whole process uses basic craft supplies, a rubber stamp, and a sewing machine (though you can get away without one, with a couple of caveats I'll get into).
What we cover
How to make a layered fabric bookplate from scraps — stamped calico topped with lace, trimmed with zigzag scissors, sewn and glued into place. I also walk through a handful of customisation ideas so you can make the label say whatever fits your journal.
What you'll learn
How to build the base layer from calico scraps — cut a piece to the size you want (there's no fixed measurement here; the bookplate can be as large or as small as your journal calls for), leaving a little extra room around the edges if you plan to sew.
How to stamp a design onto calico — I use small rubber stamps and a brilliance ink pad I picked up for fifty cents at an op shop. The stamping doesn't need to be perfectly aligned; a slightly imperfect repeat still looks good once the piece is layered and trimmed.
How to add a lace layer, including:
- Cutting lace to fit within the calico piece, so it sits inside the edges rather than overhanging
- Choosing from different lace widths and styles — I had several on hand and tried a few combinations before settling on what looked right
How to trim using zigzag (pinking) scissors — these cut the calico edge into a small zigzag that looks intentional and decorative while also reducing how much the fabric frays. I found mine secondhand for three dollars. They make a real difference to the finished look.
Why sewing around the calico edges matters — a line of machine sewing on the calico piece keeps the fraying controlled. I like a little fray, but without stitching the fabric keeps going. The sewing also tacks the layers together before you glue the whole bookplate down. That said, some of the bookplates in this video have no sewing at all — purely glued — so it's not essential.
How to glue the finished bookplate to your journal cover — I tried fabric glue first and found it didn't hold reliably on these materials. What worked was a clear all-purpose craft adhesive. It took a bit of trial and error to land on the right one, which is why I mention it specifically here.
Ideas for customising the stamped word or phrase, including:
- "Journal" (the obvious one)
- "Art journal," "diary," "goals," "dreams," "inspire"
- Single words like "love" or "just be you"
- Anything that reflects what the journal is actually for — especially useful at the start of a new year when you're setting one up with a purpose in mind
Tips & gotchas
Reach for clear craft glue or an all-purpose adhesive rather than fabric glue. Fabric glue sounds like the right call here, but I found it didn't hold as well on the combination of calico, lace, and journal cover. The clear all-purpose adhesive is what actually stayed.
If your ink pad isn't waterproof, be careful about applying wet glue directly over the stamped area. I've got one bookplate in this video where the non-waterproof ink smudged when the glue touched it. It's not catastrophic — you can barely see it once it dries — but if you want a clean result, either use a waterproof or pigment ink pad (the brilliance ink pad I used is good for this) or be strategic about where the glue lands.
Leave more space around the edges when you're planning to sew. I mention this in the video after trimming one piece a bit too tightly — it's much easier to see a clean line if you haven't already cut right up to the edge of the calico.
Sewing is optional, but it does two jobs. It keeps the calico from fraying more than you want, and it holds the lace layer in place before everything gets glued down. If you're skipping the sewing machine entirely, just make sure your glue is doing both jobs.
Dry under weight. Once everything is glued down, set something flat and heavy on top while it dries. It helps the bookplate bond evenly and stops the edges curling up.
All of this is genuinely trial and error. The bookplates in this video aren't identical — some have lace, some don't, some are sewn, some are just glued. None of that matters. What you're making is a small, personal thing out of scraps, and imperfect-but-finished is better than perfect-but-not-started.
The same technique — calico, lace, rubber stamp, a little fraying — works for almost any kind of handbound or decorated book you're making, and it's one of the better uses I've found for the small fabric offcuts that otherwise just accumulate on the desk.
