I have been making a few things for the Christmas craft fairs that I will doing with my sister. We have most weekends booked in November so I guess I had better get busy making things and not blogging.

Altered notebooks and jotters make great gifts and stocking fillers. It’s amazing what can be done with some ribbon, paper and a few punches.

Many of the value stores will have cheap notebooks and jotters for sale that are suitable for altering by covering with paper and ribbon, additional bling, stamping or punched card. Basically whatever medium you like to work with most.

I made the above using a cheap hardcover notebook bought from a local supermarket store.  I covered the notebook, front and back, using one piece of Designer Series Paper (mine was from the discontinued Woodland Walk set). The inside cover (front and back) was covered in the same paper but using the reverse matching side (sorry I forgot to take a photo). I just love these paper sets as it is a very quick and simple way to match colours and themes.

I used my Top Note Die and a piece of Wild Wasabi and Very Vanilla card stock to create the matt that the owl sits on.  Once the Very Vanilla Top Note was cut out, I simply cut around the inside using the perforated markings as a guide. I then stuck the cut out Very Vanilla onto the Wild Wasabi, and then cut off part of the left hand side as it was too wide to fit the book cover. Needs must, but I think that it still works.

The owl was punched using my Owl Builder Punch. The main part of the body is Chocolate Chip, the breast is punched using the reverse side of a scrap of paper from the notebook cover, and the eyes were punched from Chocolate Chip and Very Vanilla. The branch that the owl is sitting on was punched using the Two-Step Bird Punch and a piece of Crumb Cake card stock.

Once the branch and owl had been stuck onto the cut out Top Note I used a piece of the NEW 1/2″ Scallop Dots Ribbon in Chocolate Chip to finish the whole thing off before sticking it to the notebook cover.

My daughter has already spotted the finished notebook so I don’t think it will make it to the craft fairs. I hope you like it too.