Autumn is the time to wrap yourself in fluffy blankets, drink hot tea with rose hips or fragrant mulled wine from big mugs, think about something warm and write all the thoughts in cozy notebooks. The ones that are made with our own hands. And I'll tell you how to do it :)

We are NOT going to sew a cover, weave the headband, trim the block. We will make a cute autumn notebook simple and easy – from a notebook on the rings.

Choosing the basis for the notebook, I was looking for a notebook of 120 sheets, with high-quality pages and a dense plastic cover.

There were dividers in the notebook, which I removed to replace them with my own, suitable for color and mood. To do this, I carefully slightly straightened the ring springs and disassembled the notebook.

I took orange paper with embossing (density 230 g/m2), attached one of the "regular" dividers from the notebook and pencil circled the holes.

I am going to purchase a binder only in a month, so for now I have to cope with the usual hole punch, but not in the usual way – upside down:) I took off the lid of the garbage container to see the knives of the hole punch.

I put the sheets under one of the knives so that I could see the square in the hole.

And so I made a hole in exactly the right place.

I went through the entire length of the sheets, and then printed autumn leaves on them.

Then I gathered up the notebook back on the spring and carefully bent all the rings as it was.

Then I cut out two rectangles from the binding cardboard 1 mm thick, which I will continue to call the inner sides. These sides are equal in length to the cover of the notebook, and the width is about 1 cm shorter.

Next, from the binding cardboard thickness of 2 mm, I cut two outer sides. They more domestic on 0.5 centimeters on three sides — one a long and two short ones. And at the outer sides I rounded two corners along one of the long sides.

I have a hole punch to round the corners. But of course it is very weak, and binding cardboard is not under its power. So with this hole punch, I just drew a line of rounding.

And then I cut the corners with big scissors.
If you do not have a hole punch, you can mark the rounding with a compass or circle something round, such as a coin.

A small digression about binding cardboard and tools for cutting it.

Cardboard is of different thickness – from 0.5 to 5 mm, approximately. It should be cut with a large knife (model, construction) on a metal ruler. To cut a two-millimeter cardboard, you need to put a ruler on the cutting line, firmly press it with one hand to the cardboard, and the second hand with a knife to hold 3-5 times along the ruler, trying to keep the blade perpendicular to the cutting plane. For cardboard with a thickness of 1 mm, as a rule, two passes of a knife are enough. Do not try to cut through the cardboard in one motion — it is difficult and there is no need to load your hand so much.

From thin coated cardboard (ordinary cardboard for children's creativity) I cut the future spine. Its length is equal to the length of the outer sides, and the width is 12 cm. The width of the spine depends on the thickness of the notebook and the diameter of the spring. I have a spring with a diameter of 2 cm, I cut the spine with a margin and creased it along the longitudinal lines.

Creasing is the application to the sheets of fold lines-depressed tracks for accurate bending of paper or cardboard on a straight line. There are special bones for creasing, but you can also perform this operation with a non-writing ballpoint pen, a spoke and other thin and not sharp objects at hand.

The distance between the lines of the big listed on the following photo.

Then I glued the spine to one of the outer sides to the first creasing line. In this step, I prefer to use double-sided tape, but PVA glue is also suitable, of course.

Sides fixed on the covers of the notebook stationery clips.

Wrap the spine around the spring, slip it under the second side and mark the border on which to glue the spine to the second side.

And now both sides are glued to the spine.

That dark cardboard did not shine through a light fabric, paste over the sides with white paper.

Cut two rectangles of fabric for covers with allowances of 1.5-2 cm, and glue them to the spine along the sides. So that the sides THEMSELVES are not glued. In this situation, you can glue on the PVA, if you use cotton fabrics. I have a fabric with the addition of synthetics, quite dense, so I had to use "Crystal" glue.

Allowances tucked and pasted on the back side of the cardboard, not reaching the rounded corners of about 2 cm.

Before making the corners, cut a little extra fabric.

Then I glued the Entire cardboard and fabric allowance inside, gave the glue to dry slightly (so it better grasps), pulled the corner and pressed it to the cardboard.

Formed uniform folds and waited for the glue to seize.

Cut extra folds with scissors with sharp tips.

Similarly decorate all corners.

Stitch the cover around the perimeter at 2-3 mm from the edge with a sewing machine.

For the spine I had a piece of wonderful red leather. True, its length was not enough for the entire length of the spine, but its color was so good that I had to get out :)

I cut the skin into two strips and glued them to the spine with the help of the "Moment" glue, leaving the top and bottom allowances of about 1 cm. I do not have the joint of the leather pieces in the middle of the spine but a little higher — this is my idea. I'll decorate this joint.

The width of my nice piece of leather was just enough to divide it in half into two equal strips, close the spine from side to side. If you have enough materials, make a strip of leather wider – with overlap on the sides :)

At the junction of the leather and sides, I laid a decorative line – a zigzag.

Make allowances in leather from above and below the spine, tuck and glue to the inside.
Inside the spine I pasted fabric: top and bottom – close to the leather, right and left – with overlap on the sides.

At the junction of the leather on the spine sewed with a braid.

To the inner sides I pasted craft paper. In the photo, one side is face up, the other is faced down. It is visible that on one of the long parties there is no allowance, on other three allowances are pasted on the wrong side.

I cut two strips of fabric, rolled them up on one of the long sides and stitched them.

I wrapped cloth sides and allowances, glued to the inside. Thus the pockets in which the notebook will be put turned out.

Internal sides pasted into the cover. In this step, I use both the PVA and the Moment at the same time.

The PVA is applied as shown in blue, and the Moment is around the perimeter as shown in red.

I fix the side with stationery clips and leave to dry completely. To ensure that the clamps didn't leave marks and dents on the fabric, use additional paper.

When both inner sides were well glued to the cover, I put the notebook in the pockets and moved on to the most interesting — drawing :)

Many of you, looking at this notebook, will probably think: "No, well, I can not draw...»

In principle, you can stop at this step, come up with some other decor for the cover and get a great result. But I still want to say that I am also not a God knows what artist :), and if I managed to draw this cute fox, then why not try it for you? Especially since I'll show you how to do it :)

For drawing I used acrylic paints on fabric, thin brushes, palette, a simple pencil and a black gel pen with a thin rod.

The first thing I did was to sketch a fox and some large leaves with a simple pencil.
Coloring began with the lightest of the colors I used – white. Mark the tip of the tail, muzzle, chest and belly.
Then I applied yellow paint to the palette and painted the central part of the tail, the upper part of the muzzle, shoulder and thigh. I drew some leaves and made yellow spots in several places.

In the yellow paint on the palette, I mixed a little orange paint and got an intermediate color. I continued to paint the fox, trying to make a smooth transition from yellow to orange. Added a few more leaves and spots.

Gradually adding to the palette of orange and then red paint, I got darker shades and continued to paint the fox until it filled the entire contour of the body and tail.

Then I painted paws, ears and nose. with a black paint.
In the palette several shades of orange were mixed and they filled the space around foxes, randomly poking a brush.

And finally silver paint added accents on paws and ears of the fox. And when the paint finally dried, a thin gel pen traced the contours, which immediately enlivened the picture.

Well, then I made tea with rose hips and told you how this notebook was born :)
Thank you for watching to the end!
Warm autumn to you, creative achievements and purr-purr! :)