Journal Tutorial

 Alright so I have a serious addiction to DIY projects and such, so I decided to make my own tutorial on how to construct a journal.

To Begin You Will Need:

Cardboard ( I used a cereal box but if you have anything thicker use it!)

Scissors

Ruler

Pencil

Hot glue gun

Glue

Three small clips

Some paper (lined or not. doesn't really matter)

Construction paper (Not shown above because I forgot but oh well)

Duct Tape (electrical would probably be better but I only had Duct)

1) Alright so the first step is to fold one of your regular papers in half. You are going to use this to measure out how much cardboard you need. You want the cardboard to be about 1 1/2 cm bigger than your folded paper. So cut out two pieces of that size and also cut a slight strip of cardboard to be the spine of your journal. ( I cut out four piece and taped them together so it would be sturdier.)

2) So once you have that you want to take a long enough strip of tape and place the sliver of cardboard more or less in the middle of it. 

3) Now you want to place the other two pieces of cardboard on the tape leaving a tiny space in between each piece of cardboard. With the excess tape on either side simple fold it over the edges.

4) Next place another piece of tape to cover up the other side. Folding the excess over the edge again. Press down in between the spaces so the tape sticks together. It should look like this now.

 5) Now comes the tedious part. However many pages of paper you want, you are gonna have to fold them all in half. Try to make them as neat as possible because it makes it look nicer.

6) Next once you have them all folded. Clip them together on the folded part. One on each side, and one in the middle. 

 7) Then use the hot glue gun and cover the folded paper. Squeeze it together a little so the glue doesn't soak down too much. 

8) Wait for it to dry a little, then move the clips and go over those parts with glue as well. 

9) Let it dry and you should have a wad of paper that stays together. 

10) Now we're going to work on the cover. Take two pieces of construction paper (Mine is pretty!)  and measure out two pieces that are bigger than the folded paper (It honestly doesn't matter how much bigger, about 2 inches would be good, i only did like 2 cm and i didn't really have enough.) This is gonna be your cover paper.

11) Cut them out.

12) Line up the cover paper with the cardboard , you want there to be an even amount of excess on every side. 

13) Next take your hot glue gun and glue the cover paper over the edges of the cardboard. 

14) It should look like this now. Try to smooth the cover paper down as best you can.

15) Depending on how you want to make the cover you can either repeat steps 3 and 4 or you can wait and I'll explain another way later. 

16) Next you want to take another color of construction paper and cut out two pieces of paper that are about the same size as the folded paper.

17) Glue the construction paper to cover up the edges of the cover paper. Make sure you have enough that construction paper that you can glue it to the spine of your journal.

 18) Next glue the pages of your journal onto the spine

20) Wait for it to dry. And WHOOSH you're done!

For the another way to make the binding of the cover, cut a strip of the construction paper and paste it along the edge of the spine on both sides. (This is the other journal I made)