If you've got a stack of plain notebooks and a few crafting supplies on hand, this short tutorial might save your gift list this December. I show how to take a simple store-bought notebook — mine were three dollars each from Kmart — and turn it into something that genuinely looks considered and beautiful, without your non-crafty friends wondering what on earth they're supposed to do with it.
What we cover
Starting from a plain soft-cover notebook, I walk through making a layered bookplate for the cover, adding a laminated dried-flower bookmark, and wrapping everything — notebook, pen, and bookmark — in cellophane with ribbon and a stamped gift tag. The whole thing stays inexpensive and works as a gift for almost anyone.
What you'll learn
How to make a layered bookplate from cardstock and scrapbook paper, including:
- Layering two or three pieces in coordinating colours so the edges frame each other
- Inking the edges to seal white paper edges and give a finished look — even when the ink colour barely shows, it makes a difference
- Using a corner punch to dress up the corners, with an alternative rounded-corner cut if you don't have a punch
- Adding a stamp (or printing a word, or leaving it blank so the recipient can personalise it themselves)
Why I use two glues rather than one when attaching the bookplate — the glue stick lets me cover the whole surface evenly, but on its own it won't hold the plate to a vinyl-covered notebook. I follow it with a strong craft glue: PVA, white glue, or something like Fabri-Tac. The combination gives you the coverage of the stick and the bond of the stronger glue.
How to make a laminated dried-flower bookmark to include as a companion piece — I have a full separate tutorial on these (linked below), but the idea is pressed flowers and leaves run through a laminator with small printed or stamped sentiment strips. They're genuinely beautiful and they make logical sense alongside a notebook.
How to package the set attractively in cellophane — angle everything before you seal so the notebook, pen, and bookmark all peek out visibly. The presentation is part of the gift, and cellophane sheet wrapping gives you more control over that than a bag.
How to tie a bow with both ends pointing downward — the thing that trips most people up is going over when looping the second pass. Make your first loop, then instead of going over, go under and through. It doesn't work every single time, but it works most of the time, and both tails end up falling the same direction.
How to finish with a gift tag — a stamped tag tied on with twine pulls the whole package together and gives you a place for a personal note or the recipient's name.
Tips & gotchas
A glue stick alone won't hold the bookplate to the journal cover — especially if the cover has any kind of vinyl or coated surface. Use it for coverage if you like, but always follow up with a proper craft glue: PVA, white glue, or a fabric-style glue like Fabri-Tac. Once the plate is down, press it under something heavy while you move on to the next step. That weight while you're working on other things does most of the bonding work for you.
When you're wrapping, don't seal the cellophane until you've angled everything inside so it all peeks out attractively. The notebook, pen, and bookmark each want to be visible — tuck them on a slight diagonal before you close it up.
For the bow: the key is going under on the second loop, not over. Loop, go under, pull through. It takes a couple of tries to build the muscle memory, but once you have it, both tails fall downward naturally instead of pointing in opposite directions.
Colour-wise, you don't have to default to red and green just because it's Christmas. I was going for something a little more elegant — gold running through the ribbon and cellophane, a touch of black in the twine, the muted botanical tones of the dried flowers. Use what you have, and let it feel coherent rather than festive-by-formula.
Once you've made a few of these, they come together quickly and they stack beautifully — which matters when you've got several people on a list. They all follow the same structure but each looks slightly different because the bookplate layering and the laminated flower inside vary. That small variation is actually one of the nicest things about making a batch: they're a set, but they're not identical.
No explaining required. Pair it with the laminated bookmark tutorial if you haven't made those yet; once you have a supply of them, the whole gift comes together in minutes.
