Happy New Year everyone and welcome back to the craft room!! Today we are going to create a holder for a 5″ x 8″ notepad. The pattern I’m sharing with you today is adapted from one I found on YouTube by Michelle Allen from A Creative Operation. Her design for the 5″ x 8″ notepad had a built in pen loop. I’m not a huge fan of paper pen loops, so I changed things up a bit so mine doesn’t have one. In her video, Notepad Covers, A Tutorial, Michelle shares ideas for a few different sized notepads that I think you might enjoy. But for now, let’s get crafting.
Basic Construction
We are going to start with a piece of 12 x 12 cardstock. A thicker weight would be best as this will be getting a lot of use and we want it to last as long as possible. First let’s trim this down to 11 3/4″ x 12″. On the 11 3/4″ side we are going to score it at 1/2″, 5 3/4″, 6″, and 11 1/4″.
Turn your cardstock to the 12″ side and score at 8 1/8″
To create the pockets we are going to draw a few guidelines. As you can see from the image below I drew a line from the center score line down to the bottom of the 1/2″ score line at the bottom of the card. We are creating a pyramid of sorts. With your cutting tool of choice, cut away that center piece.
Next we are going to miter the corners at all of the score lines. This will eliminate a lot of the bulk when we fold and glue our sides down.
After we fold and burnish all of our score lines let’s start glue things together. Starting with the long sides at the top of the folder place the glue on the inside of the long 1/2″ tab. Fold the tab over and glue it into place. This will give the edge of our folder a bit of stability during daily use.
Because full access to the pockets is important we will glue them a little differently. We want to place the glue on the outside of the flap. So, when we glue the pocket into place we will be gluing the outside of lower flap to the outside of the upper flap. Make sense?? When finished we will be able to place the notepad all the way into the corner of the pocket as I have shown in the image below.
Let’s Decorate
Let’s do some decorating! For this notepad holder, I used one sheet of 12″ x 12″ pattern paper from the Habitat paper pack from Recollections. I cut my paper down to 7 1/8″ x 5″ for the front and back covers of the holder. If you want to decorate the inside you will need two additional pieces cut to this size. Since this paper already had a grunge look to it, I inked all of the edges with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.
To cover the pockets I used the remaining pieces of pattern paper trimmed down to 3 1/2″ x 5″. This is where things get a little tricky with this design. The pockets are not symmetrical so we will need both of these pieces to cover both pockets. There will be some waste, although I do have an idea and will share it in a bit. In the images below I’ve shown how each piece will need to be cut at opposite angles. I believe you can see how the pieces on the bottom will fit the pockets perfectly.
If your pattern paper doesn’t have a directional design there will be a left over piece to cover the top spine of your notebook. For my example here, I only used a small scrap left over from trimming the pocket paper to size. This is large enough to cover the brand name of the pad, but will still show the black binding, and I’m OK with that.
In the original design concept Michelle created these notepad holders to be re-fillable. The pad just slips into the pocket on the right side. Simple to add a new pad when needed. I decided to add some 2″ scor-tape to the back of my notepad and secure it to the back cover. The pocket is still accessible under the paper, but it will not fall out when I drop it on the floor.
The Finished Holder
I wasn’t planning on decorating the front cover of mine, however I did have these two silver and gold butterflies floating around my desk made from the Spellbinders Glimmer Edge Butterflies set. The last time I had my Glimmer Hot Foil machine out I tried the shine on shine foiling technique that Jennifer McGuire recently shared a video tutorial on. I had some scrap silver card, and wondered how it would look with gold foil. You can watch Jennifer’s video here, WOW! Shine on Shine Cards. It’s difficult to get a good picture of the butterflies, but I do love how they look with the paper.
The notepad holders in the photo below are Christmas gifts for family members this year. The holders on the left and right are made with Graphic 45 paper from the Midnight Masquerade collection. The sentiment is from The Greeterty and stamped with amalgam ink. The folder in the middle is made with a piece of pattern paper from Paper Pizazz called Burgundy Collage. This sentiment is stamped in Plum Archival ink and is cut with the Vintage Labels die set from Tim Holtz.
Bonus Round
As bonus for sticking around so long, here’s what I did with a few of the pattern paper scraps. I created some journaling cards to tuck into the pockets of the folder. Again, I inked around the edges with Vintage Photo Distress Ink. I now have three journaling cards and a new book mark.
Thank you so much for joining me in the craft room today! I know this was a really long post but I do hope you enjoyed the journey. Let me know in the comments below if you were inspired to create your own notepad holder. Have a wonderful week and I’ll see you again soon!