Altered Composition Books

A few weeks ago, I ran across the "lowest price of the season" sale at Michaels. I was there for something completely different, but the 12x12" paper stacks for $5 each caught my attention. I used to do a LOT of papercrafting, but I haven't done any in a long time.

There were some gorgeous paper stacks. And at $5 for 48 sheets, that's a lot of papercrafting for just a little bit of money. How could I say no? (Please don't tell me if you know how to resist this. I've enjoyed my foray back into papercrafting.)

Since it's so close to back-to-school season, I was also able to get a great deal on college-ruled composition notebooks. I've made decorative composition notebooks before, so it was a logical project for this pretty paper.

This one came mostly from the Marishka paper pad. I just added a little accent of gold foil paper along the corners.

This came entirely from the Marishka paper pad, as did the next one.

The front image on this one was a full 12x12" page. The word "love" fit onto the front of the composition notebook, so I just cut it down to size.

This is the inside of the "Love" book. I added solid cardstock inside the front and back covers of each book to hide the ugly school charts and completely disguise their humble beginnings.

All of this came from the Marishka paper pad, except for the accents of gold foil paper.

I really like the page borders that come in these paper pads. There are two whole pages of them. I just had to cut them apart.

This one came from the Grace paper pad. I added accents of gold foil paper, as I did on several of the others. The "Have Faith" sentiment was one of several 6x6" accents in the paper pad.

This one came from the Pink Champagne paper pad. I would have made a lot more with that paper pad, but I'm trying to save some for an activity for my daughter's 13th birthday party that has a black, white, pink and rose gold theme.

This was another 12x12" full page that happened to fit onto the front of my composition notebook.

I made this one from the Bless Our Home paper pad (minus the gold foil accents underneath the corners of the flower card).

This also came from the Bless Our Home paper pad. I just added a strip of matching washi tape where the two papers joined. The flower paper was a 12x12" border page. This is a perfect way to use that type of page.

This was actually the very first one I made, and it came from the Bless Our Home paper pad. The sentiment came from the bottom of a full 12x12" page. The sentiment and accents are all in gold foil, which is a little tricky to capture on camera.

There was a tree image above the sentiment, and I used it to make another notebook (up next). I thought this would be particularly neat for someone collecting genealogy information. I added gold foil paper to the insides of this one.

Lastly, this was made from the tree image leftover from the last composition notebook. Everything except the silver glittered washi tape came from the Bless Our Home paper pad.

So ... what am I going to do with all of these?

I like to give something to each of our church people for their birthday. This year, all the ladies got handknit dishcloths. (Guys got candy and will still get candy next year. They're impossible to shop for.) Next year, I plan to give each of our ladies a pretty composition book. These would make great journals, guest books, recipe books - almost anything you can think of.