Hello everybody, and welcome to another Maker Project!

As we creep up to Halloween, it's the perfect opportunity to spookify and magify every little bit of our lives! Why settle for a plain old notebook when you can have a home-made, personalized magic grimoire for your favorites spells and secrets through the power of crafts? Let's do this!

Supplies

For this project, we will need:

A small notebook
A few teabags
A few sheets of paper
Two sheets of craft felt
A few rubberbands

You will also need the following tools:

Some white glue and a wide foam brush
A safety pin, a sewing needle and some thread
Hot water and a large tray

Oh, and one more thing: that project can be a little messy! So make sure to protect your workspace with some newspaper sheets, or a trash bag cut open in two so you don't get glue everywhere and water everywhere.

Once you have everything, let's get started!

Step 1: Need a Video or Print Instructions?

Are you the kind of person who learns better with a video? We've got you!

If you'd like to print out these instructions, no problem! You can download the PDF attached to this step for instructions in English and Spanish as well.

Step 2: Dying Your Leather Paper

We're going to transform your composition notebook from the outside in - so let's start with a nice, fake leather cover made with basic copy paper and a few teabags!

First, heat up some water. Once it's hot but not quite boiling, pour it in a big pitcher and drop in the tea bags to steep. Let them stay in there for 10 to 20 minutes: this will give the water time to cool down, and you will see the water change color - as tea water does! - over time. This is what we're really interested int, to get as much of that color in the water so we can pass it on to the paper later. How? Here goes!

Tip: Once you're comfortable with that step, why not add a spoonful of coffee or hot cocoa mix to your dying mix? It'll give your paper different colors or textures that could make it look even more interesting!

Once the water has cooled down, pour some of it carefully from the pitcher into the large tray. Some of the water in there might still be pretty hot, and this can get messy quick if your pitcher drops or slips, so be careful!

Add a first sheet of paper into the tray, making sure it stays under the water. Bubbles of air will keep trying to bring it up to the surface at first but don't give up!

Next, add a little more tea water and add another sheet of paper. Again, push it down until it stays under the tea water in the tray.

Add more water, and add more paper until you're all out of water and paper! 2 sheets are usually enough for this craft but it's never a bad idea to have more than you need just in case.

Wait at least a few hours for the tea water to dye your sheets of paper: you will notice a difference already after two hours, but leaving your paper to soak up the pigment in the water overnight is not a bad idea either.

You can also help the dying by gently tipping the tray from left to right - but watch our for spills! You will start noticing a difference after just a few hours. but your sheets of paper will look even better if you leave them overnight to soak.

Eventually your sheets of paper should be a nice tan/brown color! The pigment in the water will have transfered to the paper fibers. Take your sheets of paper carefully out of the tray - they are full of water, so they are very fragile! - and leave them out to dry in the sun on paper towels.

Step 3: Gluing Your Leather Paper to the Cover

Once your paper is dry, it's time to glue it to the cover of your notebook! You would think it's a little tricky - your sheets of paper are probably not very smooth anymore, maybe they're a little wrinkled and have a different texture - but it's gonna be just fine! We have a gluing technique for that.

Squeeze some white glue on a piece of paper or on the tip of your brush, then use your brush to dab some of that glue over the whole cover of your notebook. No need to rush too much! In fact, giving your glue a little time to air-dry will help make it a little tackier and stick a little better.

After applying glue to the cover of your notebook, line up the sheet of paper with the fabric edge of the cover you dabbed glue on, and press down on it gently to make sure it sticks to the cover.

TIP: Wrinkles in the paper will happen! Don't worry, we're just trying to avoid really big ones that would prevent the paper from sticking to the notebook cover very well. Small wrinkles are fine, and they actually add to the leather texture we are going for.

Congratulations! One side of the cover down, one to go: just do the same thing all over again with the back cover of your notebook and another sheet of dyed paper.

Did you notice there's extra paper at the end of the cover? That's on purpose! Draw a line a 1/4" away from the cover, and cut along that line to hold on to the extra paper. We'll need it at the next step!

Next, cut a diagonal (fancy people and my math teacher would say "cut a line along a 45 degrees angle") across these extra flaps of paper, dab them with glue from the inside of the cover, fold them and keep them in place for a little while. Repeat with all the sides and...Put the whole composition notebook under a big pile of books overnight! This will help all the paper you glued up today stick.

Dab the rest of the paper cover on the inside and fold. Repeat for the other two edges of your first cover sheet, then do the same thing all over again for the other side of the cover. Finally, take your modded cover, and put it under a big stack of books. to help that glue stick. Leave it overnight!

Once the glue is nice and dry, cut up the corners of the corners of the dyed paper cover at a 45 degrees angle. Flip it all over, dab glue on the inside of the folds, and fold them in against the inside of the cover!

Congrats, our notebook is well on its way to becoming a magic book! Now for some enchanted lining...

Step 4: Adding Your Felt Liner

Now that your notebook is looking magic on the outside, how about making it look magic on the inside?

Tip: Primary colors work really well for the inside liner of your magic book! Think of common colors like yellow/sun blaze, silver/moon beam, orange/phoenix feather or blue/mermaid tear.

Remember these extra paper strips we cut off when we were applying the covers? Now is its time to shine! Dab it with glue just like you did the covers, and line it up against the inside fold of the cover.

The liners we are putting inside your notebook is related to what bookbinders - people whose job it is to build books together from scratch - call a pagedown. Felt is thicker than the paper a pagedown is usually made of, which is why we are not covering all of the inside cover so that the paper pages have more room near the spine

Next, squeeze more glue out on your piece of paper or on the tip of your foam brush and...Dab away again, this time on the inside of the cover! This time, you can definitely work one section at a time as felt doesn't keep folds. You can also add glue to both the cover AND the felt, and you can smooth out any big wrinkles and bubbles without risking tearing the felt too.

Gluing felt is a little different from gluing paper! You will need to use more glue on the felt to make sure it sticks well - but not so much that you can feel the glue soaking through the felt. You'll see, it's pretty easy!

Once you've glued down both felt liners to the front and the back inside covers, close your notebook and again, leave to dry under a big pile of books!

Step 5: You're Done!

Congratulations, your spell book is ready to hold your dearest secrets!

What's next? Well...How about trying other ingredients in your mix, or other materials for your pagedown? You could also try and learn to make your own notebook completely from scratch with these Instructables!

Don't forget to snap a picture and share your creations with us on Instagram with the hashtag #jocomakes! - we always love to see what you come up with. Happy Halloween!