Dilek Aspires: DIY SUNDAY: MARBLE NOTEBOOK IN 3 EASY STEPS

I WAS WALKING AROUND A home improvement and DIY store the other day when I came across this marble-patterned contact paper. If there is something you need to know about me is that I love marble patterns and I always wanted to have a marble desk.

Since recently I started using an electric sewing machine, my old SINGER sewing machine that has been in my family for 5+ generations retired and started working part-time as a makeshift desk. My mom put a rectangle plywood board {probably leftover from one of dad’s projects. He made both my wardrobe as seen HERE and installed THESE shelves few days ago} atop of it and I instantly had the idea of wrapping this gray-white marble contact paper around that board so it can both serve as a fancy desktop and as a portable background for my future Instagram flatlays.

Versatility is key people.

After wrapping it, I was left with about 100 x 14cm of this contact paper. Perhaps it’s because it’s back-to-school season, but I have been seeing a lot of photos of notebooks with marble covers floating around social media. So, I had the idea of using this last piece of my contact paper to wrap the cover of an existing notebook which I didn’t use because I hated the primary school logo on it.

Since contact paper is self-adhesive and firm, it will not tear easily and it will give an expensive look to your regular notebook. So are you ready for the simplest DIY in your life? Let’s go!

A hardcover notebook;

Contact paper or otherwise known as self-adhesive foil {THIS is the exact pattern and brand I used}

A small clean cloth;

The backing paper will have guidelines so measure the size of your notebook on it. Use a pen or a pencil to put your marks and remember to leave at least 1.5 cm around the edges of your cover so you can fold them in and get nice clean edges. Since my notebook had elastic closure and a solid background whose color I didn’t mind, I only wrapped the cover, but you can go ahead and wrap the whole thing if you want to.

This is the important part. After cutting your desired shape and size, don’t peel off the entire backing paper and just slap it on. If you do that, you will end up with air bubbles. You will also read this on the backing paper itself, but remove only 2-3cm of it and fold it. Apply the adhesive paper on the top part of your cover {don’t forget to leave out the extra 1.5cm and make sure your cover is clean so you don’t have any bumps later} and smooth it down from the center towards the edges using a clean cloth. Slowly remove the backing paper as you simultaneously push out air with your cloth.

I was the one taking the photos so sadly I couldn’t show you this part, but you can see that I flipped my notebook so I can follow the exact line where the cover folds.

After you finish smoothing out the cover, flip your notebook and fold in your edges. I first folded the top and bottom edges, smoothed them out, made two 45 degrees folds, and then folded and smoothed out the vertical side.

Lastly, I closed the notebook with its elastic strap, had some aronia berry juice my mom made in a fancy cup, and enjoyed the scent of my perfume coming from my artificial callas.