DIM: personalized notebooks

So, being my usual crafty-pants self, I decided I wanted to do something special for Xierra's (upcoming birthday party) loot bags.  So get this... as if "Xierra" wasn't an odd enough name, it turns out that the rest of her friends have unique names as well...

So my daughter isn't the only one that will never be able to buy a personalized pen from the Disneyland gift shop *whew* I'm not a bad mom, after all!

That being said, I came up with the idea of creating personalized notebooks for all of her guests:

But before I could get started on this project, I had a little bit (okay, a LOTTA-BIT) of tidying up to do in the craft room:

  AHHH....that's better.

So I started off by picking up these hard cover coil notebooks from Michael's for $1.50 each.  

I picked these ones in particular because the back covers were plain, solid colours (which meant I didn't have to cover them)

I went through my (over-populated) stash of patterned paper, picking out the girly, bolder patterns.  I measured and cut the paper with a 1/2" allowance around the 3 sides.

I went along the edges of the front cover with some double-sided tape, getting as close to the edge as possible, to avoid the paper coming up and bubbling.

Along the backside, I folded over the 1/2" allowance along the top and bottom edges and taped them into place.

I cut off the extra corner of paper, to make it less bulky when it was folded over:

 I folded both sides over...

 And then secured the last edge of paper, to get this nice finished look.

I used some 3D gel ink pens to write the names on some pre-cut tags

 (they actually dry, embossed and shiny like that!)

I embellished the front covers using some paper flowers, ribbon, flourishes, letter stickers and felt puffy stars, to get this:

Every notebook turned out different, and best of all, the girls get a little something handmade and personalized in their loot bags...errr...boxes.

With the notebooks complete, I went out and shopped for some knick-knacky things to include:

3D laser cut stickers, pencils, sharpener, eraser (shaped like desserts! yum!), m&m minis and I also included handmade bookmarks that I had leftover from my Christmas craft show

 I got some pink Easter basket on clearance for 59 cents a bag, at Michael's (good timing!) and filled the bottoms of these pie boxes that I had (also leftover from the craft show).  Showcasing the notebook through the cute scalloped window, I proceeded to fill the box with the rest of the items and topped the box off with more basket grass.


Closed 'em up and got Xierra to finish them off with these silver elastic bow strings:

TA-DAAAAAAH! A different approach to the typical birthday part loot bag!